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MAN'S 
UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

The  Psychoanalysis  of  Spiritism 


BY 

WILFRID  LAY,  Ph.D 

•■/ 

Author  of  ** Man's  Unconscious  Conflict,"  "The  Child's  Unconscious 
Mind,"  and  "Man's  Unconscious  Passion"    . 


I  *  *  *    < 


NEW  YORK 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1921 


EDUC. 

PSYCH. 

LIBRARY 


COPYEIGHT,    1921, 

Br  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY,  INO. 


PREFACE 

From  the  point  of  view  indicated  in  Chapter  III, 
namely  that  the  energy  expended  by  psychics  and 
psychical  researchers,  in  attempting  to  prove  im- 
mortality and  the  various  other  phenomena,  is  a 
conscious  desire  prompted  by  an  unconscious  fear, 
and  is  therefore  an  activity  really  not  in  line  with 
the  constructive  employment  of  the  libido,  it  will  be 
evident  that  I  approach  the  discussion  of  spiritistic 
phenomena  with  a  certain  natural  reluctance;  be- 
cause I  do  not  wish  to  be  accused  of  an  undue  in- 
terest in  either  the  validity  or  the  invalidity  of  the 
alleged  proofs. 

On  a  subject  in  which  all  my  unconscious  desire 
would  be  centred,  if  consciousness  permitted  me  to 
know  that  a  proof  was  available,  I  do  not,  from 
one  point  of  view,  wish  to  be  heard  at  all.  But  it 
has  seemed  to  me  that  enough  importance,  to  make 
it  wholly  worth  while,  attaches  to  the  question 
which  one  might,  as  a  student  of  psychoanalysis, 
put  to  the  psychical  researchers,  namely.  How  can 
you  say  so  confidently  that  such  and  such  things 
have  happened  when  we  really,  as  yet,  know  so  little 
about  the  part  played  in  all  these  phenomena  by  the 
unconscious  wishes  of  the  medium  and  of  the  ob- 
servers? 


CONTENTS 

PART  I.    CONSCIOUSNESS 

PAGE 

I    The  Stream  of  Consciousness 13 

1.  The  Feeling  of  Reality 20 

2.  Meaning         22 

3.  Degrees  of  Reality  Feeling 23 

4.  Feeling  of  Sameness 25 

5.  Deja  Vue 26 

6.  Absence  of  Sameness 28 

7.  Peculiarity  of  Sameness 29 

8.  Feelings  Are  Sensations 31 

9.  Reality  Feeling  an  Internal  Sensation  .      .  34 

10.  The  Panorama 36 

11.  Hallucinations 39 

12.  Reality  Feeling  and  Images 41 

13.  The  Feelings  and  the  Emotions  ....  42 

14.  Complexity  of  Consciousness 44 

15.  Feeling  of  Reality  Detachable     ....  47 

II    Emotions 56 

1.  Emotions  Contribute  Energy        ....  57 

2.  Emotions  Indefinite .59 

3.  Emotions  and  Unity  of  Function     ...  60 

4.  The  Objective  Situation 62 

5.  The  Conflict 63 

6.  Fear^.     ... 65 


r» 


"^          PART  II. 
THE  UNCONSCIOUS  OF  PSYCHOANALYSIS 
III    Psychoanalysis .73 

1.     Ignorance  About  Psychoanalysis       ...     74 

^2.     Spiritism  and  Love 75 

7 


CONTENTS 

PAQB 

3.  What  Psychoanalysis  Is  Not 76 

4.  Repression 78 

'5.     The  Medium 86 

<^(;^^S^nconscious  Trends      .......  87 

IV    The  Unconscious  as  an  Urge 93 

1.  Resistance  to  Knowledge 93 

2,  Complexity 99 

^---^'Non- Conscious  Ideas  and  Feelings    .     .      .  101 

i  .„4.-^Reassociation  of  Ideas 106 

5.  Occurrence 107 

6.  Current  Conscious  Psychology     ....  114 
i-TT^^"  The  Unconscious  an  Hypothesis  ....   117 

8.  An  Illustration 118 

^      9.  Accidents 121 

10.  Another  Illustration 123 

11.  Magnification 130 

12.  Limit  on  Size     .     .  t 134 

13.  Fission  and  Fusion 136 

14.  The  Unconscious  as  Omnipercipient  .      .      .  138 
^.„^^)  The  Medium  as  Unconscious 141 

(16.    Unconscious  Wishes 143 

V    Mechanisms 147 

1.  Association 147 

2.  Humans  Subject  to  Natural  Law     .     .     .  151 

3.  Personality .  153 

4.  'Unconscious  Memory 157 

5.  Earliest  Sensations 160 

6.  Intro  jection         161 

7.  Projection 165 

8.  Animism         ^  168 

9.  Attitude  Toward  Departed 170 

10.  Science  and  the  Reality  Feeling       .      .      .   171 

11.  Science  and  Projection 173 

12.  Reality  Thinking  and  Life 176 

13.  The  Reality  Feeling  vs.  Reality  Thinking    .  178 
14. ^  Unconscious  Perceptions 181 

15.  Reading  Mechanisms 182 


CONTENTS  9 

PAGB 

16.  The  Unconscious  Combination  of  Ideas  .     .  187 

.  17.     Miracles 189 

18.  Desire  for  the  Extraordinary       ....  191 

19.  Desire  for  Excitement        ...     .     .     .     .  193 

20.  Transference 195 


VI    Unconscious  Emotions  and  Will  .     .     .     .     .  201 

1.'    The  Conflict-Split  Character 201 

2.  The  Postural  Tonus 202 

3.  Emotion  a  Change  of  Relation    ....  204 

4.  Repression 207 

5.  Repression  and  Conflict 209 

6.  Emotion  Unceasing 212 

7.  Emotion  and  Health 215 

8.  Fear 216 

9.  Will 218 

10.     Will  and  Emotion 220 

,11,    Images  and  Will 224 

12.  Recalling  a  Name  ........  226 

13.  Freedom  of  the  Will 232 

14.  The  Unconscious  Will 232 

15.  Summary 235 

16.  Telepathy 237 

^ .- 17.  Pleasure-Pain  vs.  Reality  Principle  .     .     .  240 

PART  III.    THE  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 
VII    Belief  Before  Knowledge 247 

1.  Belief 247 

2.  Fear  of  Death 248 

3.  Continuousness  of  Urge 251 

4.  Verbal  Expression 256 

5.  Belief  and  Wish 259 

6.  Sadistic  Wish 260 

7.  Spiritism  and  War 263 

VIII    Knowuedge  Above  Belief 265 

1.  Ambivalence 265 

2.  A  Mental  Microscope 266 


10  CONTENTS 

PAGB 

3.  The  Neurotic 268 

4.  .The  Normal  Compulsion 271 

5.  The  Taboo 271 

6.  The  Totem 273 

7.,    'Spirit"  a  Projection 275 

8.  Repression  of  Mating  Instinct     ....  279 

9.  Belief  Is  Not  Knowledge 284 

IX    Man's  Unconscious  Spirit 286 

1.  Divisions  of  Psychical  Research 286 

2.  Unwarranted  Inferences 288 

3.  Narrowing  of  Consciousness  .     .     .     .     .  291 

4.  Transfer  of  Reality  Feeling 294 

(^^_^^  Relativity  of  Images 297 

X    Scientific  Investigations 300 

1.     The  Personal  Factor  in  Science    ....  300 

2.^^Exclusion  of  Unconscious  Factor     .     .     .  303 

3.  Belief  a  Wish 307 

4.  Dr.  Q.'s  Case 311 

5.  Elsa  Barker 315 

6.  The  Value  of  Phantasy 321 

XI    Present  Status 325 

1.  The  Medium's  Material  Reward  ....  325 

2.  Physical  Manifestations 326 

3.  What  Is  "Spirit"? 327 

4.  Quality  of  Content 328 

5.  Infantility  in  Civilized  Spirit  World    .     .  331 

6.  Reality  Thinking 334 

t 


PART  I 
CONSCIOUSNESS 


MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  STREAM   OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 

If  at  the  end  of  a  busy  day  we  reflect  upon  what 
have  been  the  day's  experiences,  we  are  struck  with 
the  constant  change  of  sensations,  from  sight  to 
sound,  to  touch,  to  taste,  to  smell,  to  pleasure,  to 
pain,  and  so  on  incessantly.     The  busiest  days  in 
which  we  hurry  from  one  detail  of  routine  to  an- 
other or  pass  from  one  exciting  scene  into  another, 
leave  no  opportunity  for  imagination.     When  rest 
finally  comes,  we  find  ourselves  thinking  over  the 
many  incidents  and,  like  the  flickerings  of  a  dying 
fire,  our  memories  spontaneously  flash  into  con- 
sciousness, and  then  vanish,  in  an  apparently  in- 
coherent manner.     Like  a  string  still  vibrating, 
after  we  have  set  it  in  motion  by  our  day's  activities,     j      (^ 
our  minds  naturally  reverberate  the  events  of  the   j 
day,  and  we  finally  prepare  our  minds  for  sleep. 
We  might  say  that  during  the  day  we  have  sen- 
sations of  various  kinds,  and,  at  the  end  of  it, 
memories,  that  have  come  to  us  in  our  moments  of 
relaxation. 

For  some  people  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to 
do  is  to  sit  and  day-dream.  This  habit  is  formed 
early  in  life,  but,  even  in  later  life,  when  the  de- 

13 


14  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIKIT 

mands  of  the  environment  are  so  exacting  that  we 
have  to  exercise  control  over  our  thoughts  as  vigor- 
ously as  we  can,  the  natural  relaxation,  which  has 
however  in  some  highly  trained  minds  become  prac- 
tically impossible,  is  to  let  our  thoughts  come  on, 
as  they  will,  a  process  which  in  the  general  run  of 
people,  takes  place  through  the  medium  of  desultory 
conversation.  In  all  the  trains  of  thought  there  are 
apparent  gaps,  breaks,  incoherences,  the  causes  of 
which  will  later  become  apparent  to  the  reader. 
f  If  we  relax  our  thoughts  to  the  utmost,  which  can 

I  best  be  done  alone  or  with  some  completely  trusted 
person,  and  examine  the  stream  of  ideas,  which 
comes  of  its  own  accord,  without  any  effort  on  our 
part,  we  may  notice,  if  we  take  the  trouble  to  ob- 
serve, that  these  ideas  are  now  visual,  now  auditory 
and  again  have  other  qualities,  different  from  either 
of  these.  The  different  qualities  of  consciousness 
are,  to  careful  introspection,  much  more  numerous 
than  the  ordinarily  accepted  "  five  '^  senses. 

What  I  shall  have  to  say  about  the  specifically 
different  qualities  of  consciousness  applies  equally 
to  sensations  and  ideas.  But  before  attempting  to 
enumerate  and  name  these  different  qualities  which 
consciousness,  whether  idea  or  sensation,  presents, 
we  shall  have  to  make  a  distinction  between  idea 
and  sensation  and  discuss  two  theories  about  them. 
When  I  look  at  an  object,  and  all  my  attention  is 
centred  on  the  visual  appearance  of  it,  I  may  say 
that  my  consciousness  is  mainly,  if  not  entirely, 
visual  in  quality.     It  yet  may  have  elements  of 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     15 

other  qualities  in  it,  interspersed  in  temporal 
sequence,  with  brief  periods  of  existence.  But 
though  these  others,  the  sounds,  smells,  touches  and 
innumerable  feelings  of  all  kinds  exist  in  the 
stream,  they  are  so  brief  as  to  be  insignificant,  and 
may  be  likened  to  the  cessations  in  impulse  between 
the  alternations  of  an  electric  current. 

When  I  hear  music,  at  an  orchestral  concert,  for 
example,  and  fix  my  eyes  upon  some  single  point,  as 
the  conductor's  score,  and  the  whole  concert  room 
becomes  an  indefinite  blur  of  light,  my  conscious- 
ness is  mainly,  if  not  entirely,  a  consciousness  of 
sound.  If  then  the  music  stops  and  I  look  at  my 
companion's  face,  my  consciousness  may  be  said  to 
change  from  an  auditory  to  a  visual  quality.  Thus 
my  consciousness  changes  all  day  long,  as  I  go 
through  the  multitude  of  the  day's  experiences, 
from  one  sense  quality  to  another. 

At  times  the  stream  of  consciousness,  as  I  see  it  ^ 
in  my  own  case,  is  like  a  thread  on  which  are  strung  / 
various  coloured  beads.  If  the  stream  of  conscious- 
ness is  mainly  visual  (most  of  the  beads  being  one 
colour,  say  white),  there  may  be  a  bead  or  two  of 
some  other  colour  or  colours  between  the  white 
ones.  But  as  these  beads  pass  at  the  rate  of  a  hun- 
dred or  so  a  second,  the  presence  of  a  blue  bead  in  a 
white  section  is  naturally  not  noticed.  Or  if  we  say 
auditory  sensations  are  represented  by  blue  beads, 
then  a  few  white  ones  interspersed  with  the  blue 
would  hardly  be  noticed.  At  other  times  the 
stream  of  consciousness  is  like  a  number  of  such 


16  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

strings  of  beads,  each  a  different  colour,  from  one 
of  which  strings  the  attention  goes  to  another, 
while  yet  the  bulk  of  them  are  fancied  to  be  in  con- 
sciousness all  the  time,  because  the  transitions  from 
one  to  another  are  so  instantaneous. 

This  is  a  series  of  changes  in  quality.  But  there 
is  also  another  change,  which  might  be  called  a 
quantity  change.  The  actual  sight  of  one  thing 
may  become  so  subsidiary  and  unimportant  for  me 
that  it  becomes  less  in  intensity  than  a  mere  visual 
thought.  An  example  of  this  is  the  familiar  phe- 
nomenon observed  in  silent  reading,  where  the 
actual  sight  of  the  printed  page  has  less  visual 
validity  than  the  visual  images  that  are  evoked  in 
the  reader's  mind  by  the  description  he  is  reading. 

In  this  case  the  visual  mental  image  may  blot  out 
entirely  the  sight  of  the  page,  although  the  reading 
goes  on  automatically,  the  pages  are  turned  and  the 
reader  is  oblivious  of  all  except  the  scenes  of  the 
story  he  is  reading.  I  think  he  may  truly  be  said 
then  to  be  conscious  only  of  the  subjective  phan- 
tasy which  the  actual  printed  page  arouses  in  him, 
and  to  be  quite  unconscious  of  the  occurrence  of 
external  stimuli  to  his  sense  organs  of  all  types 
including  the  visual  stimuli  of  the  black  letters  on 
the  white  page.  His  consciousness  may  therefore 
be  not  only  visual  in  quality,  but  at  times  auditory 
or  any  other.     It  is  also  subjective  in  quantity. 

The  visual  images  are  obviously  not  the  only 
quality  of  subjective  consciousness  that  we  have, 
for  we  have  in  our  mind's  ear  at  times  the  sounds 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     17 

of  nature,  of  musical  themes ;  we  may  also  have  in 
mind  the  odours  of  the  country  or  the  city  and  the 
mental  images,  as  I  shall  call  these  subjective  in- 
tensities of  the  same  quality,  for  every  different 
quality  of  objective  consciousness. 

Thus  we  ride  up  in  an  express  elevator  and  re- 
ceive actual  impressions  of  pressure  on  our  joints 
and  of  translation  through  space  coming  from  the 
semicircular  canals  of  the  ears ;  we  ride  down  in  a 
fast  elevator  and  feel  the  very  peculiar  sensation 
of  a  sudden  and  gradually  diminished  fall,  as  the 
elevator  slows;  and  later,  when  thinking  about  it, 
we  have  mental  images  of  the  rise  and  the  fall. 

We  have  other  sensations  coming  both  from  with- 
out the  body  and  within  it,  sensations  different 
from  the  ordinary  five  senses  and  really  amounting 
in  number  of  specific  qualities  to  over  twenty.  In 
addition  to  these  we  have  not  only  sight  and  sound 
and  joint  pressure  and  translation,  but  all  the  other 
qualities,  in  that  diminished  intensity  not  con- 
nected with  external  stimuli  occurring  at  the  time, 
an  intensity  I  have  referred  to  above  as  the  mental 
image.  My  own  experience  and  that  of  many  other 
persons  I  have  interrogated  is  that  most  of  the  sen- 
sations actually  experienced  may  be  later  revived 
in  the  shape  of  mental  images,  so  that  it  will  easily 
be  conceivable  by  any  one,  even  if  he  has  noticed 
the  images  in  himself,  that  they  are  possible,  at 
least,  as  occurrences  in  the  conscious  life  of  others, 
who  may  be  more  introspective. 

I  am  obliged  to  admit  that  there  are  persons 


18  MAN^S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

who  not  only  say  they  have  no  mental  images,  but 
also  maintain  that  others  cannot  possibly  have 
them.  I  confess  I  do  not  understand  their  argu- 
ments any  more  than  I  should  understand  the  argu- 
ment of  a  man  born  blind,  who  tried  to  convince  me 
that  there  is  no  such  sense  as  sight,  for  I  feel  that 
it  is  a  poor  argument,  and  that  it  is  frequently 
illogical  to  try  to  prove  a  negative  statement. 

Whether  those  persons  who  deny  the  existence 
of  mental  images  have  them  or  not,  they  must  have 
conscious  memories,  that  come  to  their  minds  in 
some  shape;  and  my  experience  is  that  they  come 
now  in  one  sense  quality  and  now  in  another,  in 
constant  succession,  interspersed  with  impressions 
of  external  origin,  a  stream  ever  changing  in  qual- 
ity and  intensity.  Each  quality,  whether  it  be  sen- 
sation or  feeling,  may  have  the  intensity  usually 
associated  with  the  reality  feeling  (see  Sec.  1)  and 
be  regarded  as  an  objective  truth.  A  hallucination 
is  therefore  the  occurrence  of  an  image,  or  series  or 
group  of  images,  with  the  reality  feeling.  An  illu- 
sion is  the  concurrence  of  an  external  sensation 
with  an  image,  or  of  two  or  more  external  sensa- 
tions which  interact  upon  each  other  in  such  a  way 
as  to  arouse  and  lull  the  reality  feeling,  in  asso- 
ciation with  contradictory  impressions,  almost  at 
the  same  time. 

The  main  divisions  of  the  qualities  of  conscious- 
ness as  I  have  observed  them  in  myself  are,  as  far 
as  I  am  able  to  distinguish  them,  the  following: 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     19 


Qualities  - 


Senses 


Feelings . 


1.  Sight 

2.  Hearing 

3.  Smell 

4.  Taste 

5.  Skin  (Passive) 

6.  Pressure    (Active) 

7.  Heat 

8.  Cold 

9.  Tendinous 

10.  Articular 

11.  Muscular 

12.  Hunger 

13.  Thirst 

14.  Sex 

15.  Dizziness 

16.  Nausea 

17.  Pleasure 

18.  Pain 

19.  Feeling  of  sameness 

20.  Feeling  of  Reality 

21.  Feeling  of  Will 

22.  Emotions 


jOu 


taneous 


/ 


I  should  call  different  colours  and  shades  of  the 
same  colour,  also  the  various  odours,  etc.,  suh- 
qualities. 

My  experience  is  that  the  feeling  of  sameness  and 
the  feeling  of  reality  are  qualities  that  may,  under 
appropriate  circumstances,  occupy  the  focus  of  at- 
tention and  thus  be  the  only  sense  quality  in  con- 
sciousness for  certain  brief  periods.  As  will  later 
appear,  this  is  a  most  important  point  in  consider- 
ing the  validity  of  the  so-called  proofs  of  the  ex- 
istence of  disembodied  spirit. 


20  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

§  1.  The  Feeling  of  Reality 

If  we  look  long  enough  through  a  telescope  at  a 
detail  of  a  distant  scene,  the  reality  of  that  scene 
is  at  its  height  at  the  beginning  of  the  view,  and 
diminishes  toward  the  end  on  account  of  the  re- 
peated visual  impressions  being  unaccompanied  by 
auditory  and  other  ones.  In  looking  at  a  stereo- 
scopic view  there  is  a  similar  and  very  striking 
diminuendo  in  the  internal  sensation  called  in  con- 
sciousness the  feeling  of  reality.  There  is  first 
a  strong  feeling  of  reality  caused  by  the  unusual- 
ness  of  the  third  dimension  illusion  in  the  photo- 
graph, as  one  notices,  for  instance,  how  clearly  the 
man  in  the  picture  stands  out  from  the  background. 
But,  after  a  few  seconds,  the  feeling  of  reality  pales 
rapidly,  on  noticing  the  motionlessness  of  the  man. 
This  paling  of  interest  is  due  to  the  lack  of  the  in- 
ternal sensations  usually  connected  with  a  real 
sight.  When  they  fail,  interest  is  gone.  In  the 
moving  pictures  the  movements  maintain  the  feel- 
ing of  reality  quite  strongly  until  there  comes  a 
"  close  up  "  of  some  one  speaking,  or  of  a  dog  bark- 
ing, when  the  feeling  of  reality  is  at  once  lessened, 
because  the  sound  of  the  voice  or  of  the  dog's  bark 
is  not  heard. 

The  feeling  of  reality  is  just  as  different  from  the 
sense  of  sight,  to  take  any  sense  at  random,  as  sight 
is  different  from  hearing.  I  have  mentioned  else- 
where the  fact  that  part  of  the  meaning  of  a  sight 
is  its  sound  value,  another  part  of  its  meaning  is  its 
smell  value  or  its  taste  value,  its  touch  value  — 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     21 

value  here  being  what  associations  of  other  sense 
qualities  it  has  acquired  and,  as  it  were,  made  a 
part  of  itself.  Similarly  part  of  the  meaning  of  a 
sound  is  its  visual  value  or  the  sights  associated 
with  it.  It  is  obvious  that  these  values  may  be 
quite  different  for  one  person  from  what  they  are 
for  another,  depending  on  the  different  experience 
of  the  persons. 

The  meaning  for  the  internal  sensations  attained 
by  a  sight,  a  sound,  a  taste,  a  smell  or  a  touch  is 
sometimes  its  reality,  sometimes  its  identity.  It  is 
inconceivable  that  any  sense  might  not  have  a  value 
acquired  from  any  other  sense,  and  that  any  sense 
does  not  have  implicitly  and  unconsciously  the 
value  of  all  and  each  of  the  various  internal  sensa- 
tions, as  they  are  all  present  all  the  time.  That  is, 
the  strongest  meaning  of  any  sight  for  one  person 
may  be  the  sounds  associated  with  it,  for  another 
the  smells  associated  with  it,  for  another  the  cuta- 
neous or  kinesthetic  sensations.  An  important 
source  of  meaning  for  odours  is  the  internal  or  or- 
ganic sensations  aroused  by  them. 

The  meaning  of  a  sight  is  sometimes  built  up  of 
the  auditory  sensations  of  words  associated  with  it. 
And  the  meaning  of  a  word  for  a  given  individual 
consists  of  the  visual,  auditory  and  all  other  sensa- 
tions associated  in  his  own  mind  with  that  particu- 
lar word  and  individual.  This  is  why  the  same 
word  has  different  shades  of  meaning  for  different 
I  people,  and  why  words  are  so  unstable  in  their 
meaning  while  quite  identical  in  their  form. 


22  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIKIT 

§  2.  Meaning 

And  the  growth  of  society  as  an  organism  is 
partly  dependent  on  these  associations  with  words 
(which  themselves  are  identical)  being  made  up  in 
the  majority  of  people  by  preponderatingly  similar 
groups  of  visual,  auditory,  etc.,  and  organic  sen- 
sations. 

Unless  the  word  "  thief ''  was  able  to  waken  in 
the  majority  of  people's  minds  an  unpleasant  or- 
ganic sensation,  it  would  not  mean  what  it  does  and 
people  would  not  react  toward  it  as  they  do.  One 
can  see  the  associations  collect  about  a  word  that 
has  not  before  had  them,  or  which  has  lost  them  for 
centuries,  e.  g.,  the  word  "  Hun,"  to  which  have  been 
added  as  meaning,  the  organic  reactions  aroused  by 
the  Lusitania,  by  liquid  fire,  by  poison  gas,  and 
many  other  acts  which  were  designed  by  the  Ger- 
man mind  to  arouse  these  organic  reactions  that 
they  do  and  others,  such  as  fear,  which  they  do  not. 

It  is  obvious,  too,  that  the  Hun  himself,  thinking 
so  much  about  fear  in  the  other  fellow,  must  have 
counted  it  unconsciously  very  large  in  himself. 
Only  because  to  his  own  soul  would  it  make  a  com- 
pelling appeal,  could  he  have  thought  it  out  as  a 
motive  force  in  others.  As  soon  as  the  word 
"  Schrecklichkeit "  went  around  the  world,  one 
could  have  known  that  that  was  the  way  for  the 
Allies,  had  they  been  so  low-minded  as  to  use  it,  to 
make  the  deepest  impression  on  the  mind  of  the 
Boche. 

What  war  meant  to  the  allied  mind  is  the  emo- 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     23 

tions  aroused  by  a  just  war  of  defence.  To  the 
Allies  war  was  warding  or  guarding,  with  all  that 
implies  both  of  what  is  warded  off  and  what  is 
guarded  in  the  shape  of  the  morally  inalienable. 
The  reality  feeling,  a  variety  of  internal  sensa- 
tion, associated  with  a  sight,  is  no  variation  of  the 
visual  quality  itself.  The  faint  blue  of  distant 
mountains  is  just  as  real  a  sight,  no  matter  how 
pale,  as  is  the  brilliance  of  a  rose  petal  held  near 
the  eye.  And  the  actual  tone  of  the  colour  may  be 
exactly  reproduced  in  a  coloured  photograph  or  in 
a  scene  in  a  theatre.  But  the  holding  of  the  photo- 
graph in  the  hand,  or  the  sitting  in  a  badly  venti- 
lated auditorium,  are  factors  in  the  total  situation 
which  cause  internal  sensations,  whether  conscious 
or  not,  that  diminish  the  sense  of  reality  by  being 
exceptions  to  that  sense  which  we  should  have  if  we 
were  sitting  or  walking  in  the  country  and  looking 
at  real  distant  mountains.  The  realness  of  the 
visual  impression  is  measured  only  by  the  other 
impressions  simultaneous  with  the  visual. 

§  3.  Degrees  of  Reality  Feeling 

There  are  thus  various  categories  or  degrees  of 
reality  perceptible  in  connection  with  sight  and  de- 
pendent on  the  coexistence  of  fewer  or  more  numer- 
ous internal  sensations.  The  sight  alone  of  a  per- 
son who  is  standing,  but  motionless,  has  a  degree  of 
reality  mediated  through  a  feeling  of  sameness,  a 
sameness  with  a  previous  visual  impression  that 
has  been  received  simultaneously  with  other  im- 


24  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

pressions,  sights,  sounds  and  all  the  rest.  This  de- 
gree of  reality  feeling  is  augmented  by  the  sight  of 
his  movements.  If  he  were  chopping  wood  and  I 
could  not  hear  the  sound  of  his  blows,  even  though 
he  was  within  hearing,  my  sense  of  his  reality  would 
be  altered,  diminished.  If  I  hear  the  blows,  and 
hear  him  whistle  or  talk  or  sing,  these  are  addi- 
tional factors  in  the  total  of  the  reality  feeling, 
which  receives  quite  a  shock,  if  any  one  of  these 
factors  and  many  others,  are  lacking  from  the  en- 
semble. Of  course,  there  are  persons  whose  reality 
contains  the  internal  sensations  from  more  of  these 
physical  factors  than  does  that  of  others. 

Here  emerges  the  relation  between  desire  and 
reality,  for  reality,  thus  regarded,  seems  but  the 
gratification  of  desire  or  of  the  unconscious  wish. 
The  reality  of  the  particular  individual  cannot  be 
other  than  the  sum  of  the  internal  sensations  as- 
sociated with  the  stimuli  of  his  environment,  re- 
actions which  come  to  specific  form  only  in  pre- 
sentations and  representations.  These  are  deter- 
mined by  his  birth,  bringing  up  and  education  and 
are  the  only  means  whereby  he  can  judge  the  reality 
of  his  impressions.  To  the  man  with  a  physically 
defective  eye,  one  who,  for  example,  is  colour  blind, 
reality  is  different  from  that  of  an  artist  who,  start- 
ing though  he  may  with  an  innate  weakness  in  col- 
our discrimination,  has,  by  compensation  of  con- 
stant attention,  so  refined  his  sensibilities  as  to 
excel  the  average  man. 

The  world,  to  a  hypothetical  man  who  has  a  sense 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     25 

not  possessed  by  other  men,  say,  for  example,  one 
that  would  enable  him  to  read  the  mind  of  whomso- 
ever he  chose,  would  be  a  world  having  more  reality 
than  the  ordinary  man^s  world.;  Thus  we  might 
truthfully  say  that  the  more  senses  the  more  reality, 
and  that  the  perfectly  real  world  would  exist  only 
to  the  omnipercipient,  to  coin  a  word  on  the  analogy 
of  omniscient,  which  does  not  seem  to  mean  exactly 
what  I  have  in  mind.  This  implies  that  the  more 
one  knows  about  the  world,  the  more  real  it  is,  and 
that  the  ignorant  live  in  a  world  of  unreality,  as 
they  "  know  so  many  things  that  aren't  so." 

Actual  reality,  as  distinguished  from  the  purely 
subjective  reality  feeling  here  described,  is  the  re-  „, 
lation  of  cause  and  effect,  extensity,  intensity  of 
things  external  to  the  ego,  relations  which  are  made 
manifest  to  the  ego  only  when  it  thinks  or  perceives 
in  accordance  with  the  reality  principle,  to  be  more 
fully  described  in  a  later  section  (Chap.  VI,  Sec. 
16). 

§  4.  Feeling  of  Sameness 

The  feeling  of  sameness  includes  the  feeling  of 
similarity,  for  similarity  is  but  partial  identity. 
The  feeling  of  partial  or  complete  identity  is  one 
that  functions  daily  in  all  our  discriminations  and 
classifications  and  regulates  our  conduct  hourly 
and  our  actions  every  second.  It  operates  both  in 
and  out  of  consciousness,  generally  out,  as  when  we  / 
are  sorting  things,  such  as  separating  a  pack  of  / 
cards  into  its  four  suits,  where  we  are  consciously 


2G  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

absorbed  in  the  external  action  of  putting  a  heart 
with  the  other  hearts,  a  diamond  in  the  pile  of 
diamonds,  etc.,  and  the  feeling  of  sameness  which 
governs  our  actions  does  not  appear  in  conscious- 
ness. 

But,  like  any  other  feeling,  this  feeling  can  re- 
ceive the  full  light  of  cons*ciousness,  as  in  certain 
discrimination  tests.  For  example  when  we  are 
given  a  number  of  pill  boxes  containing,  some  dif- 
ferent, and  others  the  same,  weight  of  lead,  we  are 
^voluntarily  attending  to  this  feeling,  as  we  lift  now 
one,  now  another. 

The  feeling  of  sameness  bursts  upon  us  with  sur- 
prising force  and  apparently  unconnected  with  ex- 
ternal experiences  in  the  dejd  vue  situation. 

I  have  mentioned  elsewhere  the  effect  of  the  feel- 
ing of  reality  upon  the  opinions  of  men  and  the  es- 
sential difference  between  the  feeling  of  reality 
and  the  perception  of  the  relations  of  things.  It 
may  be  objected  that  the  feeling  of  sameness  also 
mentioned  may  be  quite  the  same  feeling  as  the  feel- 
ing of  reality,  and  that  when  we  experience  what 
I  call  the  feeling  of  reality,  we  may  be  having  a 
feeling  of  the  sameness  of  this  experience,  in  its  es- 
sential feelings,  with  a  previous  experience.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  two  feelings  are  different,  as  is 
shown  by  the  dejd  vue  experience,  which,  as  it  may 
not  be  familiar  to  every  one,  I  will  describe. 

§  5.  Dejd  Vue 

Many  of  us  have  had  a  sudden  feeling  that  a  sit- 
uation in  which  we  find  ourselves  is  the  same  as 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     27 

one  we  have  been  in  before,  although  we  know  that 
this  could  not  possibly  be  the  case.  I  am  talking 
with  some  one  whom  I  have  never  met  before,  in  a 
place  I  have  never  been  before,  about  something 
I  have  never  before  discussed,  when  suddenly  I  am 
Impressed  with  a  feeling  which  I  know  to  be  con- 
trary to  actual  fact  —  a  feeling  which,  for  the  mo- 
ment, gives  me  the  impression  that  just  now  every- 
thing is  a  repetition,  an  exact  replica,  of  a  situation 
that  I  have  been  in  before  at  some  time.  Theieel- 
ing  of  sameness  in  these  so-called  deja  vue  sit- 
uations is  exceedingly  strong  for  a  brief  period  — 
a  few  seconds  —  but  it  in  no  way  affects  the  feeling 
of  reality,  which  remains  constant  throughout, 
maintaining  itself  through  the  multitudinous 
changes  of  sensations  —  from  one  colour  to  another, 
from  sight  to  sound,  etc.,  and  back  again.  The 
reality  feeling  retains,  I  think,  in  the  average  hu- 
man, and  particularly  in  the  tough-minded  type, 
a  more  even  level  of  constancy  than  any  other  feel- 
ing. 

Only  when  something  happens  which  is  a  sudden 
and  catastrophic  blow  to  our  wishes,  such  as  some 
rapid  and  stupendous  loss,  of  a  friend  or  a  fortune 
or  a  life  partner,  does  the  feeling  of  reality  fluctuate 
with  huge  undulations.  Now  we  cannot  believe 
the  facts  to  be  true,  and  now  we  cannot  doubt  the 
evidence  of  our  senses  and  the  corroborative  force 
of  many  concomitant  circumstances.  Our  wishes, 
conscious  and  unconscious,  struggle  in  a  seething 
mass  with  the  feelings  of  reality,  which  are  reani- 


28  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

mated  again  and  again  by  repeated  stimuli  from  the 
external  world. 

Thus,  in  the  deja  vue  situation,  the  feeling  of 
familiarity  (or  sameness),  which  is  a  specific  feel- 
ing and  like  no  other  sense  quality,  i.  e.,  is  not  sight 
or  hearing  itself,  but  is  an  internal  sensation,  had 
functioned  without  stimulus,  or  at  any  rate  with- 
out  the   usual   stimulus,   but   with   another.     Of 
course  it  is  possible  that  in  the  situation  felt  as 
similar  or  identical,  there  may  be  enough  elements, 
in  different  factors  of  the  situation,  that  are  similar 
/  or  analogous,  to  create  a  sort  of  summation  of 
(    stimuli  sufficient  to  evoke,  in  the  internal  sensa- 
tions, that  reaction  which  is  known  to  me  as  the 
feeling  of  sameness,  and  this,  even  though  the  actual 
situation  is  really  different  in  other  respects. 
/'  The  feeling  of  sameness  and  the  feeling  of  reality 

\  are  related  in  that  there  is  a  sameness  experienced 
in  the  repeated  functioning  of  the  reality  feeling 
occurring  uniformly  on  perception  of  external  stim- 
uli. The  very  existence  of  sameness  might  almost 
be  said  to  be  the  backbone  of  the  reality  feeling. 
And,  from  another  point  of  view,  too,  reality  is 
measured  by  uniformity.  The  greatest  degree  of 
objective  reality  is  dependent  on  universality  or 
conformity  to  natural  law. 

§  6.  Absence  of  Sameness 

And  the  noticed  absence  of  the  feeling  of  same- 
ness gives  a  sense  of  unreality  in  the  following 
situation.     One  wakes  up  in  a  room  that  one  has 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     29 

slept  in  for  the  first  time.     While  it  has  been  seen 

the  night  before,  previous  to  going  to  sleep,  there 

is  for  a  moment  no  recognition  of  its  being  the  same. 

It  all  looks  strange  and  new.     The  internal  sensa-  \ 

tion  that  would  ordinarily  report  the  sameness  has  -^ 

not  yet  waked  up.     To  recognize  that  the  room  is 

the  same,  one  has  to  have  the  feeling  of  sameness   -=-=- 

accompany  the  vision.     But  the  feeling  of  sameness 

of  visual  sensations  is  not  in  the  eye,  for  we  have,  / 

in  this  illustration,  the  visual  sensation  (which  is 

the  same)   but  we  have  it  without  the  feeling  of 

sameness,  which  is  here  evidently  absent.     There- 

fore  the  two  sensations  of  sight  and  of  sameness  are   i        ^ 

qualitatively  different  and  are  not  reported  by  the  '^ 

same  sense  organ. 

The  sajgae  sensation  reported  by  the  same  sense 
organ,  or  in  other  words,  a  repeated  identical  stim- 
.ulation,  of  the  same  external  sense  organ,  does  not 
constitute  the  feeling  of  sameness.  It  does,  on  the  1 
contrary,  have  the  effect  of  difference^  in  the  sense  "" 
that  presently  there  come  no  reports  from  the  iden- 
tically stimulated  organ.  Consciousness  leaves 
that  organ  and  goes  to  some  other,  or  to  images, 
where  the  qualities  may  be  different  enough  from 
each  other  to  keep  consciousness  awake. 

§  7.  Peculiarity  of  Sameness 

Thus  we  see  that  the  sense  of  sameness  is  of  a 
different  conscious  quality  from  that  of  sight  or 
sound  or  any  other  external  sense,  because,  in  the 
two  illustrations,  the  dejd  vue  situation  and  the 


30  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

situation  of  waking  up  in  a  room  and  not  knowing 
where  we  are,  we  find  it  isolated  in  two  different 
ways.  In  the  deja  vue  situation  we  find  it  operat- 
ing very  strongly  where  the  external  situation  is 
demonstrably  different  in  at  least  a  large  propor- 
tion of  its  elements.  We  find  it  operating,  that  is, 
where  there  is  no  external  reason  for  it  to  do  so. 

In  the  other  situation  we  find  it  failing  to  operate 
where  the  visual  situation  is  exactly  the  same  as  it 
was  when  we  were  last  conscious  of  it,  and  where  we 
ordinarily  experience  it  at  once,  and  regularly. 
The  usual  happening  is  to  wake  up  all  at  once,  so 
to  speak,  and  be  impressed  with  the  reality  and 
sameness  of  the  surroundings  we  were  in  when  we 
went  to  sleep,  but,  waking  up  visually  before  we 
wake  as  regards  our  internal  sensations  of  same- 
ness, we  see  at  once  that  the  feeling  of  sameness 
is  no  part  of  the  visual  quality,  though  it  is,  on  ordi- 
nary occasions,  taken  as  a  part  of  it. 

It  will  be  seen  later  that  I  make  this  independent 
functioning  of  the  sameness  feeling  and  the  reality 
feeling,  apart  from  actual  external  stimuli,  an  im- 
portant argument,  in  the  case  of  observers  at  a 
spiritistic  seance,  against  believing  the  apparent 
evidence  of  the  senses.  If  the  sense  of  reality  can 
be  separated,  and  actually  is  accidentally  separated 
from  external  stimuli  and  attached  to  something 
else  —  some  other  conscious  sense  quality  —  it  will 
be  evidently  one  of  the  mechanisms  by  which  the 
medium  and  the  sitters  succeed  in  deceiving  them- 
selves. 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     31 

§  8.  Feelings  are  Sensations 

What  I  wish  to  make  as  plain  as  possible  is  the 
evident  fact  that  all  the  feelings  are  sensations,  and 
have  as  much  right  to  be  consulted  about  certain 
truths  as  do  the  other  sensations.  As  qualities  of 
consciousness,  one  of  them  is,  to  the  impartial  ob- 
server, as  clear  and  distinct  as  the  other. 

Actual  truth,  however,  is  not  a  matter  of  the 
qualities  of  the  stream  of  consciousness,  but  a  mat- 
ter of  laws  of  relations  of  those  qualities.  In  what 
follows  I  shall  endeavour  to  show  that  the  spiritist 
accepts  as.  actual  truth  the  misinterpreted  succes- 
sion of  the  qualities  of  his  consciousness  and  makes 
on  this  basis  deductions  that  are  not  valid  in  the 
sphere  of  thought  in  which  the  spiritist  states  they 
are  valid.  Thus  I  am  willing  to  accept  the  state- 
ment of  any  spiritist  that  he  saw  (i.  e.,  believed  he 
saw)  a  table  rise,  or  that  he  remembers  certain 
things  happening  weeks  or  months  ago;  but  I  am 
not  willing  to  accept  his  statement  that  if  I,  or  some 
person  who  is  even  less  than  I  under  the  influence  of 
the  unconscious,  had  been  present,  we  should  have 
seen  the  same  thing.  I  know  the  large  majority  of 
spiritists  are  sincere  and  free  from  taint  of  fraud, 
which  could  be  practised  only  by  the  unbeliever. 
But  I  also  know  that  the  interpretation  of  the 
various  sense  qualities  of  the  individual  who  is 
present  at  a  seance  is  a  very  delicate  matter,  and 
has  not  yet  been  subjected  to  adequate  scientific 
tests  with  instruments  of  precision. 

By  this  I  mean  that  the  stream  of  consciousness 


^ 


32  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIKIT 

of  the  ordinary  observer  at  a  seance  is  composed  of 
the  two  elements  of  subjective  and  objective  sensa- 
tion mentioned  above  as  mental  image  and  sensa- 
tion. Also,  to  use  an  indispensable  metaphor,  the 
sensations  themselves  come  into  the  mind  both  from 
the  body  and  from  the  external  world.  Further- 
more the  sensations  coming  from  the  body  itself  in- 
clude the  only  criterion  possessed  by  humans  by 
which  to  judge  of  the  objective  reality  of  any  of 
the  other  sensations.  In  other  words  the  only 
criterion  used  in  the  seance  is  an  internal  feeling 
(the  reality  feeling)  which  is  exactly  on  a  par,  as 
far  as  objective  reality  is  concerned,  with  any  other 
internal  feeling. 

Add  to  this  that  the  internal  feelings,  emanat- 
ing solely  from  the  individuaPs  body  itself,  are  in- 
clusive of  the  emotions  and  the  wishes  and  the  de- 
sires, and  we  can  clearly  see  how  difficult  it  is,  even 
for  the  most  coldly  and  critically  scientific  of  us  to 
disentangle  from  the  welter  of  organic  sensations, 
emotions,  feelings  of  sameness,  etc.,  the  actual  feel- 
ing of  reality  that  belongs  to  the  sight  or  the  sound 
in  question. 

And  this  would  make  things  bad  enough  for  the 
truth,  if  it  were  a  matter  of  this  subjective  reality 
feeling,  but,  as  I  have  just  indicated,  scientific  truth 
is  an  observed  and  recorded  relation  between  sensa- 
tions and  is  not  a  sensation  itself.  As  I  see  and 
read  about  spiritistic  phenomena,  I  observe  more 
and  more  clearly  that  the  accounts  of  them  are 
really  true  enough  accounts  of  the  states  of  mind 


THE  STKEAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     33 

of  the  mediums  and  the  observers.  They  certainly 
see  what  they  see,  and  hear  what  they  hear,  and 
they  tell  us  carefully  what  they  see  and  hear.  But 
I  also  see  and  hear  wonderful  things.  I  can  see 
almost  anything  I  wish  to,  in  my  mind's  eye. 

I  can  hear  anything  I  desire  in  my  mind's  ear, 
even  melodies  that  have  never  been  heard  before 
by  me  or  any  one  else,  I  can  in  my  mind's  tactual 
consciousness  touch  anything  I  want  to,  feel  all  de- 
grees of  temperature,  all  sensations  of  motion,  all 
excesses  of  pleasure  or  pain,  in  short,  any  experi- 
ence of  whatever  nature  that  I  have  had  in  the 
past  or  desire  to  have  in  the  future,  all  by  means  ^ 
of  the  imagery  which,  apparently  at  will,  I  can 
evoke  whenever  I  have  the  leisure.  But  I  have  no 
interest  in  reporting  these  images  as  scientific 
truths  valid  for  any  other  consciousness  than  my 
own.  That  they  are  absolutely  incontrovertible 
scientific  proofs  for  my  own  consciousness,  no  one 
will,  I  am  sure,  attempt  to  deny. 

In  resume  then  let  me  repeat  that  I  know  I 
have  visual  sensations  and  visual  images.  Also  I 
have  auditory  sensations  and  auditory  images,  and 
sensations  and  images  of  all  the  twenty-odd  quali- 
ties of  consciousness  mentioned  in  the  list  given 
above ;  but  I  will  use  the  visual  quality  as  an  illus- 
tration, requesting  my  readers  to  substitute  for 
^'  visual "  any  and  every  one  of  the  others. 

I  know  I  have  visual  sensations,  and  that  with 
each  visual  sensation  that  I  judge  to  be  caused  by 
an  external  stimulus  comes  the  feeling  of  reality. 


\l 


34  MAN^S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

which  is  not  a  visual  sensation  at  all,  but  an  en- 
tirely different  quality  of  consciousness.  But  the 
feeling  of  reality  not  only  does  not  coexist  with 
every  visual  sensation  but  also  actually  appears  at 
times  when  there  is  no  visual  impression  being 
made  on  my  retina  at  all.  Ordinarily  the  reality 
feeling  is  so  regularly  the  concomitant  of  the  actual 
visual  sensation  that  it  is  felt  as  a  part  of  the  sen- 
sation itself,  is  fused  with  it  and  is  not  analysed 
out,  as  it  is  spontaneously  in  the  dejd  vue  situation. 
But  this  and  the  day  dream  and  the  dream  of  the 
night  show  the  reality  feeling  attaching  itself  to 
subjective  sensations,  to  memories,  to  mental  im- 
ages pure  and  simple. 

§  9.  Reality  Feeling  an  Internal  Sensation 
As  this  reality  feeling  is,  however,  while  not  a 
subjective  sensation,  an  internal  sensation  arising 
in  my  own  body,  I  am  forced  to  take  other  criteria 
for  the  actual  external  reality  of  the  visual  sensa- 
tion, if  I  wish  to  be  scientifically  sure  of  the  ex- 
istence of  the  object  itself.  Not  that  I  need  to  do 
this  every  time  or  even  frequently.  In  fact,  I  need 
to  do  it  only  when  the  visual  sensation  is  of  some- 
thing that  appears  to  violate  the  previously  ex- 
perienced order  of  visual  sensations.  Then,  if  I 
see  something  that  appears  quite  unprecedented 
or  impossible,  I  automatically  test  it  out  with  other 
sense  impressions  of  other  qualities.  Finally,  if 
I  cannot  understand  it  even  then,  and  cannot  ex- 
plain it  to  myself  as  an  illusion  of  the  sense  of 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     35 

sight,  I  have  recourse  to  the  opinions  of  other  peo- 
ple and  their  observation  and  as  a  last  resource 
to  the  instruments  of  precision  of  truly  scientific 
research. 

In  short,  my  reality  feeling  works  pretty  well 
in  conjunction  with  vision  in  all  the  ordinary  ex- 
periences of  life.  I  believe  it  does  also  with  other 
people  and  with  other  sense  qualities  of  conscious- 
ness as  well  as  vision.  If  every  one  else  in  the 
world  were  exactly  like  me  in  this  respect,  we 
should  all  be  living  contentedly  the  life  of  sensa- 
tions and  perceptions  and  thoughts  and  images  that 
has  been  lived  by  the  majority  of  people  for  thou- 
sands of  years. 

But  from  time  immemorial  there  have  always 
been  people  who  have  attempted  to  give  objective 
validity  to  their  visual  and  auditory  images.  Seers 
have  seen  visions  and  solitary  hermits  and  others 
have  heard  voices,  which  means  only  that  the  feel- 
ing of  reality  has  become  detached  from  external 
sensation  and,  in  more  than  ordinary  intensity,  has 
attached  itself  to  some  visual  or  auditory  .image.__ 
The  cause  of  this  transfer  of  association  from  the 
association  of  feeling  of  reality  with  external  visual 
sensation  to  the  association  of  feeling  of  reality 
with  a  visual  image  (or  its  transfer  from  sensation 
to  image  in  the  auditory  or  any  other  quality)  will 
be  taken  up  in  the  second  part  of  this  book.  Here, 
however,  it  should  be  said  that  in  the  nature  of 
helief  and  in  the  relation  which  belief  bears  to  the 
unconscious  wish,  there  is  an  adequate  and  per- 


h 


36  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

fectly  comprehensible  cause  for  the  transfer,  and 
that,  given  the  unconscious,  and  the  modes  in  which 
it  operates,  it  is  inevitable  that  in  some  persons  it 
should  not  work  out  in  attributing  scientific  reality 
to  visual,  auditory  and  other  images,  largely  on 
account  of  a  misunderstanding  of  what  the  term  sci- 
entific reality  means. 

The  result,  however,  of  this  misunderstanding 
and  misinterpretation  has  been  the  disagreement 
between  the  spiritist  and  the  scientist.  The  former 
is  virtually  saying  that  the  image,  which  I  shall 
show  later  to  be  entirely  the  product  of  uncon- 
scious mental  activity,  and  which  is  purely  sub- 
jective'in  origin,  is  to  be  accepted  as  a  scientific 
fact  valid  universally.  On  the  other  hand  the  sci- 
entist replies  that  it  may  be  quite  true  that  every 
one  has  visual  and  auditory  images  and  also  a  feel- 
ing of  reality,  but  the  fact  that  A  correlates  his 
feeling  of  reality  with  certain  of  his  visual  images 
is  no  proof  that  B  either  will,  or  is  obliged  to,  do 
the  same  thing. 

§  10.  The  Panorama 
A  further  description  of  the  reality  feeling  should 
include  the  fact  that  it  is  in  general  an  impression 
on  the  internal  sense  organs  felt  simultaneously 
with  an  impression  made  by  an  external  stimulus 
on  the  external  sense  organs.  When  we  see  a  real 
sight,  that  is,  when  we  have  a  real  external  im- 
pression, we  generally  have  it  accompanied  with 
the  internal  sensation  I  have  called  the  reality  feel- 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     37 

ing.  If  it  is  a  painting  we  are  looking  at,  we  are 
not  deceived,  that  is,  we  do  not  have  in  connection 
with  it,  the  feeling  that  it  is  an  actual  view,  be- 
cause all  the  other  visual  impressions  accompany- 
ing it  are  not  consistent  with  its  being,  for  example, 
a  real  country  scene.  The  presence  of  a  frame  or, 
if  it  is  unframed  on  an  easel  in  a  studio,  the  pres- 
ence of  the  other  objects  surrounding  it,  make  it 
only  a  section  of  the  total  visual  field. 

I  remember  my  first  visit  to  what  w^as  called  a 
panorama,  a  huge  painting  on  the  inside  of  a  cylin- 
der of  canvas,  the  view  of  the  top  of  which  was  cut 
off  by  the  roof  of  the  circular  tower  one  entered, 
and  climbed  up  to  view  this  elaborate  picture.  The 
visitors  could  walk  all  around  the  balcony  of  this 
tower,  and  from  any  part  of  it  they  were  approxi- 
mately equidistant,  I  believe  about  tAventy-five  feet, 
from  the  painting.  Thus  this  picture  gave  no  sec- 
tional impression.  It  was  skilfully  painted  and 
w^as  supposed  faithfully  to  represent  what  would 
be  seen  by  a  person  at  the  "  Surrender  of  York- 
town  "  or  the  "  Siege  of  Paris,"  if  he  stood  at  a  cer- 
tain point  and  turned  about  through  all  the  points 
of  the  compass.  But  the  picture,  while  it  gave  the 
general  visual  appearance  of  reality,  failed  to 
arouse  the  complete  reality  feeling  for  at  least  two 
reasons  I  shall  mention.  The  total  reality  feeling 
includes  a  combination  of  sensations  of  different 
sense  qualities,  and  the  feeling  that  a  sight  is  real 
depends  for  its  integrity  and  completeness  on  the 
simultaneous  functioning  of  the  appropriate  activi- 


38  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

ties  of  hearing  and  touch,  not  to  include  all  the  other 
external  senses,  which  contiibute  each  its  share. 

The  panorama  lacked  reality  visually  because, 
while  I  might  imagine  it  to  be  real,  if  I  stood  still, 
the  infinitesimal  changes  in  relative  position  of 
the  objects  depicted,  changes  which  would  have 
taken  place  in  reality,  did  not,  if  I  moved,  occur. 
For  examj^le,  two  distant  trees,  which,  if  they  had 
been  real,  my  movement  of  three  or  four  feet  to  the 
left  would  have  placed  one  behind  the  other  or 
would  have  shifted  very  slightly,  did  not  move  at 
all,  and  this  lack  of  movement  on  the  trees'  part  an- 
nihilated the  reality  feeling  by  immediately  arous- 
ing in  me  the  sense  of  something  "  queer  "  about  the 
visual  impression  per  se. 

To  this  was  added  the  fact  that  the  voices  of  the 
spectators  who  were  with  me  on  the  "  observation 
tower ''  were  reflected  by  the  canvas,  so  that  an 
auditory  impression  was  present,  which  would  not 
have  occurred  in  the  real  place  of  the  scene  itself. 
Therefore  in  this  picture,  which  was  designed  to 
awaken  the  reality  feeling  did  so  visually  only  in 
part,  that  is,  when  I  kept  absolutely  motionless, 
and  did  not  awaken  that  part  of  the  total  reality 
feeling  which  depends  on  sound. 

From  an  experience  of  out-doors  reality  lasting 
only  a  dozen  years  I  had  made  enough  associations 
between  visual  and  other  sense  impressions  to  be 
struck  with  the  unreality  of  something  which  would 
have  deceived  my  eyes  only  if  they  had  remained 
unmoved,  and  which  presented  other  impressions 


THE  STREAM  OP  CONSCIOUSNESS     39 

to  my  external  senses,  that  were  contradictory  to 
former  experience,  e.  g.,  sound.  Smell  too  was  con- 
tradictory and  the  feeling  of  the  air  on  my  youth- 
ful cheeks  was  quite  different  from  what  it  would 
have  been  in  the  open. 

The  feeling,  therefore,  that  any  sight  is  the  sight 
of  a  real  thing  depends  upon  concomitant  impres- 
sions of  hearing,  temperature,  air  pressure  and 
other  qualities  of  conscious  sensation. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  under  abnormal  condi- 
tions there  may  not  be  an  utter  absence  of  the  real- 
ity feeling  in  the  presence  of  real  stimuli  of  all  sense 
qualities  otherwise  making  up  the  total  reality  feel- 
ing. We  may  be  in  such  a  subjective  state  at  times  J 
that,  while  all  the  objects  of  our  surroundings  are 
making  their  specific  appeal  through  our  various 
avenues  of  sense,  they  still  do  not  arouse  the  .in- 
ternal feeling  of  reality.  It  is  not  difficult  to  cite 
cases  of  this.  An  example  is  the  waking  up  in  a 
room,  above  mentioned,  and  seeing  the  objects  in  it 
and  not  "  placing  "  oneself.  It  is  at  first  as  unreal 
as  a  dream.  The  eyes  have  waked  up  first  and  not 
the  other  senses.  Other  examples  might  be  given 
from  neuroses  in  which  the  feeling  of  unreality  is 
one  of  the  striking  symptoms. 

§  11.  Hallucinations 
So  too  the  feeling  of  reality  may  occur  independ- 
ently of  all  the  external  avenues  of  sense  or  of  all 
save  one,  as  for  example  in  hallucination,  where  we 
think  we  see  or  hear  a  person  and  there  is  no  one 


X 


40  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

there,  or  in  illusion  where  there  is  a  real  stimulus 
in  one  sense  quality,  but  hallucinatory  contribu- 
tions from  the  other  qualities. 

But  the  point  of  the  whole  discussion  is  that  the 
feeling  of  reality  is  one  thing  and  the  visual  or 
auditory  impression  is  another.  The  latter  comes 
from  an  external  stimulus  which  is  rarely,  if  ever, 
in  real  life,  isolated  from  other  external  stimuli  of 
other  sense  qualities.  That  is  to  say  that  as  senti- 
ent beings  we  function  as  integrated  unities,  and 
our  sights  are  never  sights  alone  but  are  always 
sights  plus  sounds  plus  touches,  etc.,  the  complete- 
ness of  the  whole  symphony  of  senses,  so  to  speak, 
being  necessary  for  the  strongest  feeling  of  reality. 
And  this  feeling  of  reality,  which  is  not  sight  and 
not  sound,  nor  smell,  nor  taste,  nor  cutaneous  sen- 
sation, nor  motor  sense  alone,  but  is  a  perception 
of  all  of  them  together,  is  an  internal  sensation,  and 
not  itself  an  external  one  at  all. 

A  fact  also  not  to  be  lost  sight  of  is  that  the 
reality  feeling  is  felt  not  alone  with  external  per- 
ceptions of  the  classes  mentioned  above,  sights, 
sounds,  etc.,  but  is  felt,  if  to  a  slighter  intensity, 
with  memories  and  ideas  of  all  sorts.  And  there 
are  people  of  an  imaginative  nature  who  have  the 
feeling  of  reality  very  strongly  in  connection  with 
ideas  of  visual  content,  of  auditory  content,  etc. 
For  such  persons  the  actual  experience  of  real 
things  is  frequently  confused  with  ideal  experi- 
ences.    For  s6me  reason  which  is  not  germane  to 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     41 

our  present  discussion,  their  feeling  of  reality  is 
hyperexcitable.  How  they  have  become  hypersen- 
sitive to  the  complex  feeling  of  reality  does  not  in- 
terest us  here.  The  fact  is  that  they  are  thus  hyper- 
sensitive. 

§  12.  Reality  Feeling  and  Images 

That  the  feeling  of  reality  normally  occurs  to  a' 
slight  degree  in  connection  with  a  visual  image  is 
quite  comprehensible  if  we  consider  that  all  the  ave-  ^j 
nues  of  sense  are  traversable  in  both  directions. 
Whether  this  is  a  literal  fact  or  not  with  regard  to 
the  actual  direction  of  nerve  impulses  does  not 
make  any  difference.  We  know  that  the  sight  of 
some  appalling  thing  recurs  to  consciousness  with 
an  intensity  normally  great,  even  if  it  is  less  than 
that  of  the  original  experience.  We  know  that 
strains  of  music  spontaneously  occur  to  the  mind^s 
ear  from  time  to  time  for  hours,  after  listening  to 
a  concert  or  opera.  And  it  would  not  be  unreason- 
able to  suppose  that,  even  if  we  were  not  conscious 
of  it,  there  also  spontaneously  recurred  impressions 
from  other  senses  which  were  impressed  at  the  same 
time  we  had  the  original  experience.  And  the  feel- 
ing of  reality  is  one  of  those  sensations  originally 
aroused  at  the  time  of  the  incident  in  question,  the 
automobile  accident  or  the  concert  or  what  not.  So 
it  is  quite  reasonable  to  suppose  that,  as  we  func- 
tioned at  the  time  as  an  integrated  totality,  we 
should  now  function  as  a  whole,  though  with  dimin- 


42  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

ished  intensity,  and  that  the  recurring  vision  should 
bring  with  it  a  slight  resuscitation  at  least  of  the 
feeling  of  reality. 

§  13.  The  Feelings  and  the  Emotions 

The  internal  sensations  are  the  most  interesting 
of  all  sensations,  including,  as  they  do,  the  organic 
sensations  of  nausea,  hunger,  thirst  and  sex,  and 
the  feelings  usually  called  emotions,  whose  classi- 
fication and  description  has  caused  so  much  dis- 
agreement among  psychologists,  and  whose  relation 
to  desires,  wishes  and  volitions  has  been  so  unsatis- 
factorily investigated  to  date. 

The  internal  sensations  are  particularly  interest- 
ing to  the  student  of  psychoanalysis,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  of  psychical  research  problems  on  the 
other,  because  of  their  ordinary  indefiniteness, 
coupled  with  a  propensity  they  have  of  coming 
severally  or  in  groups  suddenly  into  the  light  of 
consciousness,  and  thereby  greatly  influencing  the 
individual's  conduct,  and  especially  his  beliefs, 
fears,  hates,  loves,  dislikes  and  his  verbal  expres- 
sions. 

The  internal  sensations  are  doubly  interesting, 
too,  if  we  realize  that,  in  the  unconscious,  a  brief 
exposition  of  which  will  be  given  in  Chapters  IV  to 
VI,  these  sensations  are  absolutely  constant  and 
unremitting,  as  long  as  life  lasts.  No  general  and 
unceasing  activity  of  a  large  city,  some  of  whose 
inhabitants  are  always  awake  and  doing  their 
work,  could  come  anywhere  near  being  as  universal 


THE  STKEAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     43 

as  is  the  activity  in  the  living  human  or  animal 
body,  reports  of  which  are,  so  to  speak,  made  to 
the  brain  and  nerve  centres  every  instant,  whether 
the  individual  be  conscious  or  unconscious,  awake 
or  asleep.  As  long  as  he  lives,  his  lungs  are  filled 
and  emptied  of  *  air  and  his  blood  circulates,  his 
various  vital  organs  perform  their  unremitting 
functions,  and  the  cells  of  his  tissues  are  incessantly 
proliferated  with  the  ceaseless  activity  of  a  factory 
which,  once  opened,  never  shuts  down  until  it  is 
finally  dismantled  and  razed. 

Something  will  be  said  later  about  the  uncon- 
scious, which  is  the  power  that  drives  the  machines 
in  this  human  productive  unit,  but  here  I  would 
mention  only  the  fact  that  of  the  details  of  the 
actual  motions  of  the  various  machines,  and  of  the 
shapes,  densities  and  other  qualities  of  the  raw 
material  and  the  different  stages  it  goes  through, 
few  are  probably  ever  known  by  the  president  of  the 
company  owning  the  factory,  in  other  words,  con- 
sciousness. Only  on  the  rarest  of  occasions  does 
a  workman  appear  in  the  executive  offices,  so  to 
speak.  It  is  as  unusual  as  is  the  phenomenon  ab- 
normal which  is  studied  by  the  psychical  research- 
ers. But  it  would  be  quite  illogical  for  the  factory 
hand  of  an  automobile  plant  to  appear  and  try  to 
tell  the  owner  about  a  soap  factory  a  thousand 
miles  away. 

The  facts,  that  appear  in  the  spiritistic  seance, 
are  psychological  facts,  but  they  have  no  more  bear- 
ing on  the  questions  they  are  declared  to  have  than 


44  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

would  be  the  claim  of  an  auto  mechanic  that  a  soap 
vat  would  do  to  paint  auto  bodies  in. 

Expressing  this  in  psychological  terms  we  may 
say  that  the  qualities  of  consciousness,  which  term 
I  prefer  to  "  spiritistic  phenomena/'  evoked  at  the 
seance,  are  all  natural  phenomena,  and  no  excep- 
tions to  the  laws  of  the  unconscious  and  of  con- 
sciousness taken  together,  but  that  they  are  offered 
as  proofs  of  what  would  require  quite  a  different 
type  of  fact  to  prove  it.  In  other  words  science 
cannot  yet  accept  either  the  facts,  for  reasons  I  will 
later  give,  or  the  interpretations  of  those  facts, 
which  seem  to  the  psychical  researchers  as  evi- 
dences of  disembodied  intelligence  or  survival  of 
conscious  personality. 

§  14.  Complexity  of  Consciousness 

In  this  chapter  I  wish  merely  to  emphasize  the 
very  great  complexity  of  the  stream  of  conscious- 
ness. In  another  chapter  I  will  present  the  proofs 
of  the  still  greater  complexity  of  the  unconscious. 
But  as  the  conscious  life  itself  is  so  complex,  its 
own  testimony  about  matters  of  scientific  truth  has 
to  be  most  carefully  sifted,  and  as  the  unconscious 
is  still  more  complicated  and  at  the  same  time  is 
a  very  large  factor  among  the  determinants  of  the 
conscious  life,  it  is  manifestly  absurd  to  take  the 
testimony  of  either  conscious  or  unconscious  men- 
tality as  having  any  weight  in  an  argument  de- 
signed to  prove  the  independent  existence  of  spirit 
apart  from  body,  when  the  nature  of  the  connection 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     45 

between  mind  and  body  is  so  little  understood  as  it 
is  today. 

In  fact  it  is  much  too  early  to  say  that  any  such 
separating  and  distinguishing  a  thing  as  a  connec- 
tion between  two  separate  things  may  be  predicated 
of  mind  and  body.  It  may  be  that  mind  is  only 
something  analogous  to  a  quality  of  a  chemical 
compound,  differing  from  the  qualities  of  any  of  the 
elements  of  which  it  is  composed.  Mind  or  spirit 
would  then  be  merely  a  quality  of  the  compound: 
life  and  matter,  and  as  dependent  on  both  matter 
and  life  for  its  existence  as  are  the  qualities  of  the 
chemical  compound  dependent  upon  the  two  chem- 
ical elements  themselves. 

Finally  the  thesis  of  this  chapter  is  that  those 
who  make  any  statement  whatever  concerning  the 
thing  they  call  spirit  will  be  obliged  not  only  to 
make  a  careful  definition  of  what  it  is,  and  what  re- 
lation it  bears  to  the  subjective  sensations  or  mental 
images ;  but  also  to  orient  themselves  exactly  as  to 
the  functions  of  these  mental  images  in  the  mental 
life  of  the  individual,  before  they  venture  to  state 
that  anything  perceived  via-  the  subjective  or  ob- 
jective sensations  can  be  said  to  be  scientifically 
true  or  to  prove  the  existence  of  a  force  outside  the 
body  but  related  to  the  body  —  a  force  that  pre- 
serves in  its  existence  outside  of  the  body  something 
like  a  conscious  personality.  In  brief  the  direct 
experience  we  have  of  mind  or  "  spirit  '^  is  only  in 
/  connection  with  the  body,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  de- 
\  duction  pure  and  simple  to  prove  (1)  its  existence 


46  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

apart  from  the  body  and  (2)  its  ability  to  affect 
bodies  with  which  it  is  not  directly  connected. 
Some  of  the  difficulties  of  such  proof,  not  to  say  its 
impossibility,  I  shall  attempt  to  show  in  what 
follows. 

We  have  no  direct  experience  of  our  own 
"  spirit "  demonstrably  separated  from  our  own 
body,  any  more  than  we  have  a  direct  experience  of 
any  one  else's  spirit  apart  from  our  own  body.  I 
infer  that  others  have  minds  like  mine,  and  the 
validity  of  my  inference  is  dependent  on  what  I  per- 
ceive them  doing.  My  perception  of  the  actions 
of  others,  which  are  what  I  should  do  myself,  if  I 
were  in  their  place,  is  my  only  logical  guarantee 
that  they  exist  and  have  mental  and  physical  equip- 
ment like  my  own. 

The  psychical  researcher,  however,  asks  us  to  be- 
lieve, for  he  cannot  demonstrate,  that  there  are 
beings  without  bodies,  who  can  act  in  ways  unlike 
our  present  corporeal  mundane  ways,  that  these 
beings  were  once  connected  with  bodies  now  disin- 
tegrated and  that  we  ourselves  will  become  such 
beings  after  our  bodies  disintegrate.  It  is  one 
thing  to  be  asked  to  believe  this,  quite  another  to  be 
^  given  scientific  proof  of  it.  I  believe  it  most  po- 
tently, but  I  cannot  accept  the  proof  of  it  that  is 
offered.  I  shall  show  later  how  it  is  inevitable  that 
I  should  believe  it,  and  yet  quite  as  inevitable  that 
I  should  reject  the  arguments  offered  to  prove  it; 
the  word  belief  being,  as  I  think,  used  in  a  double 


v 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     47 

sense  in  ordinary  language,  but  really  meaning 
that  which  would  be  lief  or  be  liked. 

While  my  perception  of  the  actions  of  others  is 
my  only  logical  guarantee  that  others  exist,  it  is  a  .^ 
completely  satisfactory  one  for  it  has  never  been 
known  to  fail.  The  logical  guarantee  offered  by 
the  spiritist  fails  at  almost  every  time  and  place. 
If  it  did  not,  our  entire  social  life  would  be  quite 
different  from  what  it  is ;  for  we  should  all  be  able 
all  the  time  to  commune  with  absent  or  deceased 
friends  or  relatives,  to  raise  and  project  ourselves 
through  space,  and  to  lift  almost  any  weight  at 
almost  any  distance  without  touching  either  it  or 
anything  connected  with  it,  and  finally  to  locate 
all  the  hidden  treasures  in  the  world,  and  to  fore- 
tell with  absolute  certainty  just  what  was  going  to 
happen  in  the  future. 

§  15.  Feeling  of  Reality  Detachable 

The  feeling  of  reality  is  a  floating  feeling,  that 
is,  it  may  become  attached  to  any  sensation  what- 
ever or  failing  to  be  connected  with  a  sensation,  it 
may  attach  itself  to  an  image.  While  this  specific 
internal  quality,  the  feeling  of  reality,  different 
from  sight  or  hearing,  usually  is  felt  as  an  almost 
indistinguishable  part  of  the  sight  or  sound,  in  the 
dejd  vue  situation  it  functions  without  stimulus. 
It  is  also  a  feeling  that  is  backed  up  by  the  uncon- 
scious wish,  which,  being  the  craving  for  external- 
ity, will  seek,  in  almost  any  available  substitute, 


48  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

externality  or  the  feeling  of  reality  that  generally 
reports  externality.  In  other  words  the  uncon- 
scious wish  inevitably  tends  to  attach  the  feelings 
of  reality  to  something.  In  a  spiritistic  seance  the 
feeling  of  reality,  being  in  the  minds  of  the  sitters 
removed  as  much  as  possible  from  those  external 
impressions  of  sight,  sound  and  touch,  with  which 
it  usually  lives,  is  in  a  particularly  errant  and  un- 
satisfied state  and  flies  with  avidity  to  anything 
that  occurs  with  sufficient  vividness.  As  has  been 
mentioned  elsewhere,  the  conscious  mental  states 
that,  in  circumstances  which  remove  light  and 
sound  completely,  are  most  likely  to  occur  are 
mental  images,  the  representations,  whether  exact 
replicas  or  recombinations  of  their  components,  of 
experiences  that  have  occurred  to  the  sitters  at 
some  previous  time  in  their  lives. 

In  the  half  sleep  catharsis  practised  by  Dr.  Lud- 
wig  Frank  of  Zurich  these  visual  or  auditory  mem- 
ories, together  with  the  emotions  that  accompanied 
the  original  experiences,  are  made  the  object  of 
special  scientific  study  for  their  bearing  on  the 
analysis  of  his  patients.  In  the  spiritistic  seance 
they  are  made  the  arguments  to  prove  the  existence 
of  discarnate  intelligences  different  from  the  sitter. 
In  Frank's  patients  the  feeling  of  reality  is  asso- 
ciated with  many  of  these  visions.  His  patients 
for  the  moment  believe  they  are  again  experiencing 
what  they  did  once  experience.  In  the  spiritistic 
seance,  the  images,  visions,  sounds  or  touches  as  the 
case  may  be,  are  similarly  associated  with  the  feel- 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS      49 

ing  of  reality.  But  in  the  doctor's  patients  the 
reality  is  a  reality  that  is  recognized  to  apply  only 
to  the  patients'  own  past.  In  the  seance  the  real- 
ity felt  by  the  individual  sitter  is  claimed  to  be  a 
reality  for  all  people,  not  only  at  the  time  and 
under  the  circumstances  but  in  all  conditions.  Yet 
it  is  evident  that  what  is  felt  as  real  by  a  single 
person  under  unusual  circumstances  is  not  likely 
to  be  universally  valid  for  all  people  in  all  cir- 
cumstances. 

In  short  the  phenomena  of  the  seance  are  due  to 
the  propensity  of  the  unattached  feelings  of  reality 
on  the  part  of  the  sitters  to  attach  themselves  to, 
other  mental  states  than  objective  sensations  — 
from  external  stimuli,  in  other  words,  to  the  sub- 
jective states  of  the  sitters,  that  is,  to  their  own 
mental  images  which,  under  the  conditions  of  the 
seance,  are  much  more  likely,  than  in  ordinary  life, 
to  come  from  the  unconscious,  where  they  are  ordi- 
narily kept,  and  to  appear  in  consciousness.  The 
question  of  the  occurrence  into  one  person's  mind 
of  images  that  have  originated  in  the  mind  of  some 
other  person,  telepathy,  is  a  question  that  will  be 
more  fully  discussed  in  another  place.  Here  I  am 
stating  merely  that  the  unconscious  wish  forces  the 
attachment  of  the  feeling  of  reality  to  something 
all  the  time.  If  it  cannot  be  attached  to  external 
stimuli,  because  of  their  being  as  far  as  possible 
eliminated  by  the  conditions  of  the  seance,  it  will 
spontaneously  attach  itself  to  images. 

In  a  disposition  or  in  a  situation  where  the  feel- 


50  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

ings  of  reality  are  loosely  attached  to  the  different 
external  sensations,  it  is  sometimes  a  matter  of 
doubt  as  to  whether,  in  any  given  experience,  they 
will  attach  themselves  to  the  external  sensation  or 
to  the  image.  Where,  on  the  contrary,  there  is  a 
strong  sense  of  pleasure  associated  with  an  image 
(and  a  pain,  or  no  pleasure  at  all,  associated  with 
an  actual  external  sight),  there  is  no  doubt  that  the 
reality  feeling  will  tend  strongly  to  attach  itself 
to  the  image,  and  not  to  the  contradictory  or  an- 
tagonistic visual  sensation.  Thus,  if  the  observer 
at  a  seance  saw  dimly  the  medium's  foot  lifting  up 
the  table,  and  at  the  same  time  had  a  strongly  pleas- 
urable feeling  attached  to  the  sight  of  an  unsup- 
ported table,  which  he  visualized,  the  feeling  of 
reality  would  naturally  attach  itself  to  the  image  of 
the  unsupported  table.  And  in  the  case  of  Eusapia 
Palladino's  feet  (or  rather  shoes  supposed  to  con- 
tain her  feet)  which  were  held  by  two  of  the  ob- 
servers, the  tactual  image  of  the  foot-filled  shoe, 
being  so  closely  associated  with  the  unconscious 
pleasure  of  being  a  partaker  in  so  remarkable  an 
incident  as  a  table  rising  without  visible  means, 
would  of  course  have  the  reality  feeling  attached  to 
it,  and  the  shoe  holder  would  testify  that  he  knew 
the  woman's  foot  was  in  the  shoe  all  the  time. 

Thus  we  see  the  anticipated  pleasure  preparing 
to  attach  a  semi-floating  feeling  of  reality  to  an 
image  already  formed  in  the  observer's  mind,  in- 
evitably attaching  it  thereto  by  virtue  of  the 
psyche's  irresistible  leaning  toward  pleasure  and 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     51 

away  from  pain.  The  deception  is  not  consciously 
made  by  the  observer,  but  is  made  unconsciously 
for  him  by  the  steady  drift  of  the  unconscious  itself. 
This  is  the  very  essence  of  belief  —  be-lief -ing  or  be- 
pleasing  an  actual  sight  or  sound  into  an  image  by 
driving  from  the  actuality  the  feeling  of  reality 
and  attaching  it  to  the  image,  which,  impelled  up- 
ward from  the  unconscious  by  the  same  trend 
toward  pleasure  and  away  from  pain,  is  waiting 
ready  to  receive  it. 

Belief  is  therefore  the  attachment  of  the  reality 
feeling  to  an  image  sent  up  from  the  unconscious 
depths  of  the  psyche.  A  verbally  expressed  belief 
is  merely  the  wording  of  the  same  mental  process. 
Knowledge  is  the  awareness  of  the  law  according  to 
which  things  take  place;  and  is  as  entirely  inde- 
pendent of  belief  as  it  is  completely  liberated  both 
from  the  image  and  from  the  feeling  of  reality. 
Both  of  these  are  intimately  connected  with  bodily 
processes,  while  knowledge  of  the  relations  of 
things  outside  of  the  body  is  necessarily  cut  off 
from  all  participation  in  matters  of  images  or  feel- 
ings. 

The  conditions  and  the  very  atmosphere  of  the  \ 
spiritistic  seance  are  such  as  to  cause  the  feeling 
to  be  a  floating  feeling  adrift  in  the  strong  current 
of  the  unconscious.  Those  who  attend  the  seance 
with  the  fully  conscious  purpose  of  becoming  the 
more  convinced  are  no  more  adrift  on  the  uncon- 
scious current  than  those  who  come  with  ridicule 
or   scepticism.     The   same   unconscious   wish   for 


52  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

magnification  of  the  ego  controls  what  is  believed  by 
the  latter  as  much  as  what  is  believed  by  the  for- 
mer. So  that  where  there  is  a  strong  conscious 
wish  to  believe  the  opposite,  and  an  equally  strong, 
if  not  stronger,  wish  to  believe  in  spirits,  there  will 
be  a  bitter  conflict  in  the  psyche  of  the  individual. 

Only  the  person  who  has  clearly  grasped  the 
reality  principle  will  be  free  from  the  vacillations 
of  the  reality  feeling.  Such  a  person  alone  in  his 
thinking  has  freed  himself  from  his  conscious  and 
unconscious  desires.  In  this  sense  science  is  as 
truly  emancipated  from  desire  either  for  one  thing 
or  for  its  opposite  as  is  the  Hindu  who  has  attained 
Nirvana.  The  scientist  alone  can  see  facts,  be- 
cause he  alone  is  uninfluenced  by  the  ideal  of  what 
he  thinks  facts  ought  to  be  or  to  show.     To  become 

fa  true  scientist  one  has  to  learn  to  care  not  a  whit 
whether  a  thing  is  one  way  or  the  other,  but  only  to 
care  to  find  out  which  way  it  is. 

This  does  not  mean  that  I  am  attempting  to 
place  any  comparative  value  upon  either  fact  or 
fancy.  One  of  them  may  be  as  valuable  for  human 
life  as  the  other,  in  different  spheres  of  human  ac- 
tivity. But  it  does  mean  that  I  wish  to  keep  them 
apart  and  to  emphasize  the  necessity  of  not  calling 
a  fancy  a  fact. 

The  only  point  in  which  science  can  be  said  to 
take  an  interest  in  the  unconscious  wish  is  the  point 
of  its  causal  effect  upon  the  actual  life  of  man  or  the 
universe.     The  question  is :  Does  belief  affect  real- 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     53 

ity,  or  only  the  reality  feeling?     Can  a  man  in- 
crease his  stature  by  taking  thought? 

The  important  contribution  made  by  psycho-  \J 
analysis  to  this  very  problem  is  the  fact  that,  how- 
ever it  happens,  certain  types  of  diseases  are  cured 
by  psychoanalysis.  We  know  they  are  cured  by 
this  agency;  we  know  that  physical  factors  are 
changed  by  the  patient's  mental  view  of  his  sur- 
roundings being  changed  by  thoughts  that  come  to 
him  during  his  visit  to  the  psychoanalytic  phy- 
sician. While  we  know  the  ^aci  from  correlation 
of  repeated  observation,  we  do  not  know  exactly 
how  the  cure  is  brought  about. ^  But  the  discov- 
ery that  the  unconscious  wish  has  something  to  do 
with  the  cure  puts  the  unconscious  wish  imme- 
diately into  the  category  of  objects  to  be  studied 
scientifically,  and  it  is  now  being  studied  by  many 
people  in  different  parts  of  the  world.  For  exam- 
ple Ferenczi  ^  regards  the  stigmata  and  other  hys- 
terical conversion  phenomena  as  the  only  true  ma- 
terializations, in  which  the  unconscious  wish  that 
is  unable  to  enter  consciousness  is  not  satisfied  with 
sensory  excitation  of  the  apparatus  of  perception 
but  transfers  itself  directly  to  physiological  func- 
tions themselves. 

I  have  noted  that  the  feeling  of  reality  has  de- 
grees from  that  of  the  greatest  reality,  in  the  great- 
est activity,  to  that  of  the  least  reality  in  the  body's 

1  See  Frink:  Morbid  Fears  and  Compulsions,  page  547. 

2  Hysterie  und  Pathoneurosen,  1919,  p.  24. 


54  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

state  of  least  activity.  I  have  also  noted  that  the 
most  intense  feeling  of  reality  is  formed  of  the 
concurrence  of  the  separate  feelings  of  reality  asso- 
ciated with  the  different  senses,  sight,  sound,  touch, 
taste,  etc.  Therefore  we  might  suppose  that  a  per- 
son whose  senses  were  shut  off  or  were  anesthetized 
one  after  another  would  feel  less  and  less  reality. 
The  sounds  that  come  to  the  ear  sound  real  enough 
when  the  eyes  are  closed,  but  the  total  feeling  of 
reality  is  less,  and  if  after  closing  the  eyes  we  stop 
up  the  ears  too,  the  feeling  of  reality  is  still  less 
intense.  Take  away  after  that  touch  and  smell 
and  taste,  and  life  would  have  little  feeling  of 
reality  left  associated  with  external  impressions, 
and  would  attach  itself  to  internal  impression  and 
to  ideas  and  images. 

Images,  whether  conscious  or  unconscious,  are 
the  concrete  and  specific  form  which  the  uncon- 
scious wish  takes  in  its  rise  upward  from  the 
fundamental  craving  for  life,  love  and  activity,  and 
the  methods  of  its  selection  of  what  specific  images 
to  offer  up  to  consciousness  (whether  they  reach 
consciousness  or  not  being  another  matter  of  their 
availability  and  ability  to  pass  the  censor  ^)  are 
the  principles  of  symbolism  and  are  governed  by 
another  feeling,  the  feeling  of  similarity. 

So  if  the  unconscious  selects  for  presentation  to 
consciousness  particular  images  according  to  the 
principles  of  symbolism,  based  on  the  feeling  of 
sameness,  it  is  quite  likely,  if  not  inevitable,  that 

1  See  Wilfrid  Lay:  Man's  Unconscious  Conflict,  page  71. 


THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS     55 

the  images  will  be  those  most  apposite  to  the  dozen 
or  so  of  primary  symbols  mentioned  by  Ernest 
Jones/  symbols  that  are  common  to  all  men  and 
women.  Therefore,  the  images  presented  to  a 
group  of  people  assembled  for  a  common  purpose 
are  likely  to  have  a  high  degree  of  symbolic  affinity. 
They  will  all  be  likely  to  be  those  associated  with 
the  concept  of  death.  So  that  in  the  cross  corre- 
spondences noted  by  Frank  Podmore  in  his  book, 
The  Newer  spiritualism  (New  York  1911,  page 
240),  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  the  automatists 
in  various  parts  of  the  world  thinking  of  death  in 
various  symbolic  images.  And  his  conclusion 
"forced  upon  us  by  an  impartial  study  of  the  re- 
port "  that  "  the  coincidences  cannot  be  explained 
by  mere  chance  association  of  ideas "  is  super- 
ficially true  but  only  so.  The  association  is  not  a 
chance  one  but  is  determined  in  each  case  by  the 
unconscious  wish  of  the  automatist,  and  their  un- 
conscious wishes  are  exactly  the  same  as  those  of 
every  one  else  in  the  world.  The  unconscious  can- 
not wish  for  death,  and,  in  sending  up  its  death 
symbols,  presents  them  in  negative  form,  the  net 
result  being  only  the  ever  present  wish  for  life. 

^Psychoanalysis,  page  144. 


J    y 


CHAPTER  II 

EMOTIONS 

I  trust  I  have  at  least  partially  succeeded  in 
showing  the  high  degree  of  complexity  of  even  the 
stream  of  consciousness,  when  we  look  at  it  in  its 
entirety  from  the  beginning  of  the  day  to  the  end 
of  it.  We  are  not  only  seeing,  hearing,  smelling 
and  tasting  from  time  to  time  each  day,  but  are  re- 
ceiving conscious  impressions  of  entirely  different 
sense  quality  in  the  shape  of  heat,  cold,  active 
movement,  translation  through  space,  articular 
and  tendinous  sensations,  muscular  sensations,  and 
pressure  on  different  parts  of  our  skin,  in  the  shape 
of  hunger,  thirst,  sex,  dizziness,  nausea,  pain,  pleas- 
ure, the  feeling  of  sameness,  the  feeling  of  reality, 
the  feeling  of  will  and,  what  I  have  not  yet  men- 
tioned, the  emotions. 

If  the  conscious  life  were  not  complex  enough 
already,  it  would  become  so  by  the  addition  of  the 
emotions,  which  I  define  as  sensations  of  internal 
conditions  within  the  body,  differing  in  quality 
from  the  other  internal  sensations  just  mentioned. 
Their  importance  in  the  discussion  of  spiritistic 
problems  is  not  so  much  the  fact  that  any  adverse 
or  unpleasant  emotions  are  said  to  be  unfavourable 
for  the  proper  conduct  of  a  spiritistic  seance.  The 
observer  who  comes  with  contempt  or  aversion  in 

56 


EMOTIONS  57 

his  hea^rt  is  not  welcomed  by  the  circle,  and  is  con- 
sidered to  have  a  deleterious  effect. 

§  1.  Emotions  Contribute  Energy 

The  importance  of  the  emotions  for  our  consid- 
eration of  these  problems  presented  by  spiritism 
comes  from  the  fact  that  the  emotions  contribute 
not  only  a  large  amount  of  energy  to  actions,  mak- 
ing them  much  stronger  and  efficient,  but  also  an 
amount  of  weight  hardly  to  be  underestimated,  to 
the  statements  made  about  anything  and  particu- 
larly about  spirit.  In  short  we  believe  what  we 
like  and  say  what  we  believe. 

This  is  the  advantage  possessed  by  the  truly  re- 
ligious disposition  over  the  doubting  one,  that  it 
makes  the  possessor  of  it  cheerful,  happy  and  con- 
tented, both  those  who  are,  to  use  William  James' 
expression,  "  once  born  "  ^  and  those  "  twice  born," 
who  have  wrestled  with  their  doubts  and  have 
gained  from  the  struggle  the  necessary  relaxation 
of  dubitant  tension.  But,  if  we  fully  grasp  the  im- 
plications of  modern  analytical  psychology,  we  see 
that  the  antagonism  between  science  and  religion 
has  appeared  in  a  new  field.  Formerly  the  doc- 
trines of  evolution  were  thought  to  be  at  variance 
with  the  inspired  story  of  creation  in  six  days. 
Now  the  nature  of  the  soul  is  being  examined  by 
science  in  such  a  way  as  to  show  that  science  can- 
not prove  even  the  existence  of  the  kind  of  soul 
religion  claims  for  mankind. 

1  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience. 


58  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

It  is  a  very  simple  and  "  once  born  "  experience 
to  feel  certain  of  the  soul  as  a  personal  conscious- 
ness transcending  the  corporeal  and  surviving 
death;  but  it  is  quite  another  experience  to  begin 
to  doubt  the  evidence  of  the  feelings  and  seek  for 
proof  among  the  relations  of  external  phenomena. 
Whence  comes  the  doubt?  It  is  not  merely  from 
verbal  objections  to  belief  that  the  truly  religious 
disposition  may  hear  casually,  and  that  fill  his  mind 
with  alarm.  The  doubt  is  a  physiological  mal- 
adjustment that  has  become  conscious  as  an  idea  of 
visual,  auditory  or  other  external  sense  quality,  a 
maladjustment  that  turns  into  despair  in  melan- 
cholic mental  disorders,,  where  it  has  reached  or  is 
reaching  its  limit,  beyond  which  it  breaks  up  the 
body.  Like  any  other  form  of  religion,  spiritism 
is  more  an  emotional  matter  than  a  purely  intel- 
lectual one  and  the  dominant  emotion  in  it  all  is 
fear. 

When  we  realize  that  the  impressions  made  upon 
the  mind  from  the  body,  through  nerves  that  ter- 
minate in  sense  organs  situated  in  all  parts  of  the 
body,  are  appearing  to  consciousness  from  time  to 
time  all  day  long  and  every  day,  it  is  evident  what 
a  difficult  matter  it  is  to  classify  and  describe  the 
emotions,  and  how  natural  it  has  been  for  man- 
kind to  associate  them  with,  and  practically  to 
name  them  after,  external  things,  perceived  through 
other  senses. 

It  is  the  great  number  of  these  internal  sensa- 
tions and  the  fact  that  they  are  felt  in  groups  of 


EMOTIONS  59 

ever  changing  combinations  of  elements  that  has 
made  us  automatically  integrate  them  by  associat- 
ing them  with  now  one,  now  another,  of  the  ex- 
ternal sensations,  sight,  hearing,  and  the  others. 

§  2.  Emotions  Indefinite 

Consequently  a  definiteness  is  attained  (essen- 
tial to  the  emotions  being  constantly  perceived  by 
consciousness)  by  the  very  fact  of  similar  groups 
of  internal  sensations  being  associated  with  spe- 
cial ideas  (sights,  sounds,  etc.).  It  is  easily  com- 
prehensible that  there  are  very  few  innate  associa- 
tions of  emotions  with  external  sensations,  for  in 
infancy  the  impressions  received  from  the  various 
internal  organs  are  quite  as  numerous  as  they  are 
in  adulthood,  yet  they  are  associated  with  few  ideas 
or  few  external  perceptions,  because  of  the  fact  both 
that  there  are  few  ideas  with  which  to  associate 
them,  and  that  the  actual  external  impressions 
themselves  only  later  acquire  significance,  i.  e.,  asso- 
ciative connection  with  the  internal  sensations  of 
fear,  aversion,  etc.  Thus  Watson  has  shown 
clearly  enough  by  his  experiments  on  infants  that 
they  have  practically  no  innate  fear  of  animals,  the 
fear  being  later  acquired  through  experience. 

The  consciousness  of  the  position  of  the  body  is 
one  of  the  internal  sensations,  and  is  very  early 
associated  with  pleasurable  or  unpleasurable  emo- 
tions. The  maintenance  of  the  body  in  one  posi- 
tion is  secured  through  the  constant  operation  of 
impulses  from  the  nerve  centres,  which  are  exceed- 


60  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

ingly  frequent ;  and  this  holding  of  the  body  rigid 
soon  becomes  very  irksome.  Therefore  pleasant  or 
unpleasant  emotions  come  into  consciousness, 
though  faintly,  from  time  to  time,  all  day  long, 
due  to  our  sitting  or  standing  in  certain  positions. 
And  conversely  the  posture  of  the  body  is  well 
known  to  have  an  influence  on  the  general  emo- 
tional tone.  As  James  said  ^ :  "  Smooth  the  brow, 
brighten  the  eye,  contract  the  dorsal  rather  than 
the  ventral  aspect  of  the  frame,  and  speak  in  a 
major  key,  pass  the  genial  compliment,  and  your 
heart  must  be  frigid  indeed  if  it  do  not  gradually 
thaw!" 

§  3.  Emotions  and  Unity  of  Function 

The  sensory  nature  of  emotion  must  be  clearly 
grasped  before  one  can  see  its  effect  on  action.  An 
emotion,  being  an  organic  sensation,  and  closely 
connected  causally  with  the  vegetative  (autonomic) 
processes  of  the  body,  it  is  obvious  that  only  those 
emotions  are  advantageous  to  the  health  of  the 
body  which  are  conducive  to  the  complete  func- 
tioning of  the  body  as  a  totality,  an  organism  all 
of  whose  parts  are  necessary  to  the  integrity  of  the 
whole,  and  the  functioning  of  any  one  of  which  will 
by  deficiency  or  surplus  proficiency,  alter  the  total 
productivity  of  the  whole. 

If  this  unitary  conception  of  the  organism  is 
true,  then  there  will  be  no  total  situation  environ- 

^  Psychology,  Vol.  II,  page  463. 


EMOTIONS  61 

ing  the  individual  that  does  not  influence  all  of  him 
at  the  same  time.  There  will  be  situations  in 
which  he  is  subject  to  the  maximum  degree  of  dis- 
traction in  which  part  of  him  will  want  to  go  one 
way  and  the  other  part  in  the  opposite  direction, 
such  as  a  man  standing  on  the  window  sill  of  the 
tenth  story  of  a  building  with  the  room  on  fire 
behind  him.  The  height  invites  him  in,  the  fire 
out.  A  girl  is  in  the  same  situation  when  a  man 
importunes  her,  whom  she  loves  or  by  whom  she  is 
infatuated.  In  this  situation  she  is  torn  between 
the  lure  of  the  fire  within  and  the  fall  without. 

Thus  situations  have  really  objective  qualitative 
differences,  being  of  a  diametrically  opposing  char- 
acter, such  as  the  two  I  have  mentioned,  and  all 
the  way  around  through  a  hundred  and  eighty  de- 
grees of  arc  to  a  situation  in  which  all  the  sub- 
jective and  objective  elements  together  pull  the  in- 
dividual in  one  direction  and  there  is  nothing  in 
the  physical  or  psychical  situation  that  produces 
any  conflict,  or  puts  any  brake  on  the  utter  abandon 
of  the  action. 

As  an  example  of  this  I  would  offer  the  skilful 
dive  of  a  good  swimmer  into  a  swimming  hole  in 
the  country.  The  coolness  of  the  water  allures,  as 
the  heat  of  the  skin  invites,  the  swimmer,  the  cre- 
scendo run  up  to  the  ecstatic  acme  of  the  plunge, 
during  the  passage  through  the  air,  the  muscles 
of  the  whole  body  being  in  a  rigorous  tension, 
which,  in  the  loop  under  the  water,  gradually  di- 


62  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

minishes  until  it  reaches  the  complete  relaxation  of 
the  floating  position  and  the  quietly  resumed  res- 
piration. 

§  4.  The  Ohjeotwe  Situation 

This  objective  situation  may  be  said  to  contain 
every  element  of  attraction  for  the  ordinary  young 
male  human;  any  conflicting  element  in  it  belong- 
ing necessarily  to  the  state  of  mind  or  body  of  the 
particular  individual.  In  spite  of  pool,  shady  spot 
and  sunlight  filtering  through  the  forest  trees,  in 
spite  of  heat  of  body,  and  warmth  of  air,  and  the 
hunger  of  the  body  for  external  liquid  refresh- 
ment, there  may  be  an  idea  or  an  inability  or  a  fear 
on  the  part  of  some  youth  that  will  make  him  un- 
able to  dive,  to  enter  the  water  at  all,  or  to  enjoy 
his  swim,  even  after  he  has  stepped  or  dived  in.  If 
it  be  not  an  actual  disability,  such  a  deterrent  fear 
or  inability  belongs  entirely  to  the  internal  or 
psychical  situation.  The  total  situation  in  any 
human  activity  is  never  exclusively  external,  nor  is 
it  even  in  sleep  or  dreams  exclusively  internal,  but 
the  activities  of  the  swimming  pool  nature  approach 
externality  as  a  limit,  and  dreaming  approaches 
internalized  attention  as  a  limit. 

We  may  question  whether  or  not  the  tendency 
is  greater  of  internal  conflicts  to  assert  themselves 
over  external  ones,  that  is,  external  situations  that 
are  intrinsically  conflicting.  Thus  there  are  peo- 
ple whose  external  situation  as  such  causes  them 
internal  conflicts,  while  other  people  in  the  same 


EMOTIONS  63 

external  situation  develop  no  conflict  at  all.  A 
given  amount  of  wealth,  if  possessed  by  those  who 
have  been  wealthier,  will  cause  worry,  while  the 
same  number  of  dollars  for  those  who  have  had  less, 
will  be  the  cause  of  profound  satisfaction.  Yet 
there  are,  or  appear  to  be,  natures  that  will  de- 
velop a  conflict  out  of  any  situation  whatever.  No 
matter  how  well  supplied  they  are  with  the  world's 
goods  or  with  physical  strength  or  with  social  re- 
lationships, they  will  be  everlastingly  unhappy. 

§  5.  The  Conflict 

The  activities  of  the  psychical  researchers,  when 
regarded  as  merely  the  natural  actions  of  a  group 
of  people  in  whom  rages  the  conflict  between  the 
idea  of  life  and  the  idea  of  death,  become  much 
easier  to  understand.  They  are  people  in  whom  the 
concept  of  the  permanent  termination  of  the  con- 
scious personality  associated  with  the  integrity  of 
their  physical  organism  is  unconsciously  regarded 
with  such  horror  that  they  take  any  steps  possible 
to  prove  that  this  coming  to  an  end  on  the  part  of 
consciousness  is  not  really  true. 

Such  people  have  not,  of  course,  thought  much 
about  mind  existing  apart  from  consciousness,  and 
in  the  second  part  of  this  volume  I  shall  have  some- 
thing to  say  about  that  possibility  and  its  bearing 
on  the  question  of  immortality.  The  spiritists,  on 
the  other  hand,  emphasize  the  misfortune  of  losing 
consciousness,  although  we  normally  lose  it  daily 
in  sleep,  and  many  times  during  the  day  it  is 


64  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

broken  and  interrupted  and  changed  in  such  a  way 
and  to  such  a  degree  that,  regarded  as  an  entity 
in  itself,  it  cannot  be  said  to  have  a  very  important 
existence.  If  I  had  to  choose  between  "  scrap- 
ping "  my  conscious  mental  activities  and  my  un- 
conscious ones,  I  should  certainly  throw  over  the 
former,  as  being  the  least  advantageous  for  my 
welfare. 

Mind  existing  apart  from  consciousness,  exist- 
ing in  a  way  inscrutable  to  consciousness,  is  the 
only  way  in  which  we  can  conceive  of  mind  as  being 
permanent.  As  the  unconscious  is  the  vital  urge 
and  the  vital  urge  is  most  continuously  manifested 
in  the  germ  plasm,  it  may  eventually  turn  out  that 
the  only  immortality  of  the  soul  that  can  be  proved 
by  science  is  that  of  the  continuity,  through  in- 
dividual after  individual,  of  the  germ  plasm  it- 
self. And  when  we  reflect  that  modem  genetic 
biology  has  demonstrated  the  existence  of  so  great 
a  complexity  in  the  chromosomes  of  the  sexual 
cells  of  animals  and  man,  and  reflect  that  they  are 
the  continuous  life  and  that  everything  else  about 
the  body  comes  to  life  and  dies,  we  may  not  be 
surprised  if  some  day  the  "  soul ''  is  located  in  the 
germ  plasm,  in  the  genes  of  the  chromosomes,  in- 
stead of  the  pineal  gland  or  other  places. 

The  fact  that  there  is  a  conflict  in  the  emotions 
existing  in  so  many  people  shows  that  there  is 
room  for  what  we  shall  have  to  call  mere  chance 
happening  in  the  association  of  any  internal  sen- 
sation  or   emotion    with   any   external   sensation 


EMOTIONS  65 

caused  by  a  real  stimulus.  If  it  were  not  so,  the 
design  then  otherwise  manifested  would  not  be 
carried  out, —  the  design  of  having  each  individual 
completely  unified  for  operation  without  the  rack- 
ing strains  and  counter-strains  caused  by  the  pleas- 
ant and  unpleasant  emotions  getting  attached  to 
things  that  necessarily  have  to  happen  together, 
with  the  unfortunate  result  that  we  are  frequently 
pleased  and  pained  by  the  same  actual  experience. 

§  6.  Fear 

As  a  result  of  what  is  apparently  purely  fortui- 
tous happening,  therefore,  certain  external  impres- 
sions gradually,  beginning  in  infancy,  become  asso- 
ciated with  the  sensations  constantly  entering  con- 
sciousness from  the  interior  of  the  body.  What 
gives  these  internal  sensations  their  pleasurable  or 
unpleasant  qualities  is  obviously  the  general  well 
being  and  proper  functioning  of  the  organism  it- 
self, or  the  opposite. 

It  is  easy  to  see,  then,  that  fear,  which  is  an  in- 
ternal sensation  of  a  group  of  phenomena  taking 
place  in  the  various  organs  of  one's  own  body,  is 
hardly  describable  or  to  be  grasped  in  terms  of  it- 
self, but  is  readily  associated  with  anything  that 
happens  to  be  seen,  heard,  touched,  smelt  or  tasted 
at  that  particular  time.  It  has  taken  centuries  to 
turn  men's  attention  from  the  thing  "  causing  "  the 
emotion  to  the  emotion  itself.  The  resistance  to 
this  direction  of  the  gaze  has  been  almost  insuper- 
able.    Humanity  has  insisted  that  the  badness  of 


66  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

its  feelings  was  caused  by  the  badness  of  things  out- 
side of  the  body,  and  that  good  feelings  were  caused 
by  good  things,  although  things  external  could  not 
be  called  either  good  or  bad  in  themselves,  but 
only  as  evoking,  in  the  individual,  feelings  that  he 
called  good  or  bad.  In  a  later  chapter  I  shall  have 
something  to  say  about  the  unconscious  mechanism 
that  really  causes  some  of  these  illogical  tendencies 
to  attribute  internal  qualities  to  external  things, 
namely  projection  and  introjection.  (See  Chap.  V, 
sec.  6  and  7.) 

The  feeling  of  sameness  or  the  feeling  of  similar- 
ity will  spread  this  associated  connection,  between 
fear,  for  instance,  and  either  external  sensations  or 
reproductions  of  these  in  the  shape  of  mental  im- 
ages; with  the  result  that,  even  if  the  original  ex- 
perience associated  with  fear  never  comes  again, 
any  similar  experience  will  tend  to  become  asso- 
ciated with  the  internal  sensations  constituting  the 
fear. 

It  thus  happens  that  an  association  is  made  be- 
tween fear  and  death,  and  also  that  anything  that 
is  like  death  or  in  any  manner  suggests  death  will 
arouse  the  same  fear.  There  are  then  associated 
together  in  the  individuaPs  mind  a  number  of  ex- 
periences, actions,  words,  ideas  or  other  states  of 
consciousness,  any  one  of  which,  by  virtue  of  its 
similarity  with  the  idea  of  death,  will  arouse  the 
same  unpleasant  emotion. 

This  group  of  ideas,  experiences,  etc.,  which  is 


EMOTIONS  67 

thus  associated  together  by  its  tendency  always  to 
stir  up  the  emotion  of  fear  is  called  a  complex. 
It  is  quite  evident,  too,  that  there  are  complexes 
integrated  by  other  emotions  than  fear.  But  we 
are  now  in  a  position  to  state  that  the  spiritist  is 
one  whose  emotions  are  largely  enlisted  on  the  sub- 
ject of  death.  He  has,  so  to  speak,  a  death  com- 
plex. 

A  corollary  of  this  is  that  the  pleasant  emotions 
will  be  enlisted  on  the  side  of  life,  and  every  ex- 
perience that  through  the  feeling  of  similarity  can 
be  associated  with  the  concept  of  life  will  be 
grouped  together  in  the  same  individual's  mind. 
Thus  there  will  be  two  groups  of  ideas  or  experi- 
ences in  his  mind,  each  of  which  will  be  antagonis- 
tic to  the  other.  Large  amounts  of  unpleasant 
emotion  will  be  accumulated  on  the  side  of  death, 
and  similarly  large  amounts  of  pleasant  emotions 
on  the  side  of  life.  That  is  to  say,  life,  and  by  that 
I  mean  the  continuance  of  conscious  personality, 
will  come  more  and  more  to  be  regarded  as  the 
greatest  desideratum  and  death  quite  the  opposite. 
Therefore  such  a  person  will  consciously  collect 
all  possible  evidence  for  the  continuance  of  life  and 
for  the  non-existence  or  the  explaining  away  of 
death. 

And  if  it  is  adequately  realized  what  an  impetus 
is  given  to  all  human  activity  by  human  emotions, 
it  will  be  quite  evident  that  no  stone  will  be  left 
unturned  both  to  prove  the  existence  of  the  con- 


68  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

scious  personality  after  the  mortal  coil  has  been 
shuffled  off,  and  to  minimize  the  significance  of 
death  itself. 

I  might  add  that  in  other  individuals  not  inter- 
ested in  spiritism  the  fear  of  some  other  thing  than 
death  will  be  found  to  have  paired  off  with  its 
antagonist  and  to  have  enlisted  all  the  unpleasant 
emotions  on  the  one  side  and  the  pleasant  ones  on 
the  other.  Only  with  these  people  it  did  not  hap- 
pen to  be  death. 

I  have  taken  fear  as  an  illustration  only.  The 
most  refined  or  subjective  emotions  are  other  groups 
of  internal  sensations  that,  in  the  particular  in- 
dividual, have  become  gradually  associated  with 
more  and  more  abstract  ideas,  such  as  the  rela- 
tions between  forms  and  masses  and  colours  seen, 
between  tones  and  intensities  of  sounds  heard,  and 
between  flavours  smelt  and  consistencies  and  tastes 
of  substances  put  into  the  mouth  as  food.  The  pos- 
sibility of  combinations  of  relations  between  in- 
ternal and  external  is  endless. 

It  is  enough  in  this  chapter  if  I  have  indicated 
the  enormous  complexity  of  even  the  conscious 
mental  content,  both  in  specific  instances  and  in 
variety  of  specifically  different  qualities  of  con- 
sciousness. I  feel  that  I  shall  not,  however,  have 
begun  to  represent  the  wealth  of  possibilities,  with- 
out offering  the  reader  what  is  contributed  to  this 
subject  by  the  unconscious. 

If  the  emotions  are,  as  has,  I  trust,  been  suf- 
ficiently shown  in  this  chapter,  sensations  of  in- 


EMOTIONS  69 

temal  origin  within  the  body,  and  if  we  constantly 
have  the  body  with  us,  so  to  speak,  it  will  be  quite 
necessary  to  suppose  that  there  are  many  states  and 
conditions  within  the  body  that  never  or  rarely 
enter  consciousness.  It  will  be  evident  then  that 
the  only  reasonable  name  to  give  them  is  uncon- 
scious emotions.  We  are  having  unconscious  emo- 
tions all  the  time,  then,  whether  we  are  asleep  or 
awake.  Indeed  it  has  recently  been  shown  that  the 
quality  of  our  sleep  is  impaired  or,  for  hours  at  a 
time,  we  do  not  sleep  at  all,  not  merely  because  of 
conscious  emotions  preventing  sleep,  but  because  of 
unconscious  emotions  making  it  impossible  or  un- 
refreshing. 

So  too  we  have  unconscious  sensations  not  only 
from  internal  stimuli  but  from  external  ones  and 
we  have  unconscious  images.  The  whole  world  of 
the  unconscious  mental  life  in  the  mind  of  each  and 
every  one  of  us  must  be  our  next  topic,  previous  to 
which,  however,  I  shall  have  to  give  a  brief  account 
of  how  it  has  been  lately  studied  by  means  of 
psychoanalysis. 


PART  II 
THE  UNCONSCIOUS  OF  PSYCHOANALYSIS 


CHAPTER  III 

PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Psychoanalysis  is  the  name  given  by  Freud  to 
the  method  of  investigating  those  mental  phenom- 
ena which  do  not  find  explanation  by  the  ordinary 
methods  used  in  learning  about  conscious  mental 
states.  It  serves  also  as  a  means  for  bringing  about 
cures  of  certain  mental  and  physical  illnesses  which 
are  known  to  be  of  psychic  origin.  Its  chief  inter- 
est, however,  is  not  for  the  invalids  that  are  re- 
stored to  health  through  its  elaborate  technique, 
for  they  are  necessarily  few  in  number,  because  the 
physicians  competent  to  use  it  are  an  almost  neg- 
ligible quantity. 

Its  interest  for  the  majority  of  people  of  the  edu- 
cated classes  comes  from  a  very  different  source, 
namely  the   extraordinarily   clear  explanation   it"V 
gives  of  almost  all  the  inconsistencies  and  insoluble  I 
problems  of  any  aspect  of  human  nature  which  ex-  \ 
eludes  the  main  tenet  of  psychoanalysis,  namely  the 
dynamic  aspect  of  the  unconscious  mental  activity. 
It  is  therefore  the  firm  conviction  of  the  present 
writer  and  of  all  real  students  of  psychoanalysis, 
that  less  than  half  the  actual  facts  are  taken  into 
consideration  by  those  who  ignore  or  misconstrue 
what  the  scientific  study  of  the  unconscious  has  to 

73 


74  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIKIT 

say  about  any  phenomena  which  may  in  any  sense 
be  called  mental  or  psychic. 

§  1.  Ignorance  about  Psychoanalysis 

Almost  all  people  interested  in  spiritistic  phe- 
nomena are  ignorant  of  the  newer  psychology  and 
few  of  those  who  know  of  it  have  failed  to  miscon- 
strue it.  It  is  therefore  the  object  of  the  present 
volume  to  present  as  clearly  as  possible  the  compli- 
cated subject  of  the  application  of  psychoanalytic 
facts  to  the  claims  inade  by  the  spiritists,  and  to 
indicate,  for  the  help  of  those  who  instinctively  feel 
that  spiritism  is  a  misinterpretation  of  facts,  how 
the  factors  revealed  by  a  knowledge  of  the  uncon- 
scious bear  upon  the  asseverations  of  the  adherents 
of  spiritism,  and  what  regions  of  the  normal  human 
mind  the  spiritists  have  entered,  without  knowing 
it,  and  brought  back  from  subliminal  depths  mate- 
rial that  is  not  in  any  way  extraordinary,  nor  valu- 
able as  a  logical  proof  of  the  tacit  assumptions  of 
spiritism.  A  suggestion  will  be  offered  as  to  what 
would  be  a  necessary  procedure,  if  the  facts  of  spir- 
itism were  to  be  fully  accepted  as  scientifically 
proven  facts,  and  this  suggestion  will  make  it  evi- 
dent how  far  we  are  from  scientifically  confirming 
what  is  stated  in  numerous  books  and  by  promi- 
nent people,  whose  words  have  great  persuasive 
force,  even  people  who  have  made  their  mark  in 
strictly  scientific  work. 

To  the  contention,  therefore,  of  the  many  writers 
who  have  supported  the  statements  of  spiritism  we 


PSYCHOANALYSIS  75 

shall  have  to  say :  Is  there  not  another  explanation 
of  these  phenomena  —  an  explanation  that  you  have 
either  never  heard  of,  or  have  heard  of  only  inade- 
quately, or  have  perhaps  misunderstood?  If  you 
had  the  other  explanation  offered,  would  you  not  be 
obliged  to  consider  it,  as  it  is  now  fully  accepted 
by  science,  and  to  change  some  of  your  views  about 
what  you  have  seen  or  heard,  or  think  you  have  seen 
or  heard? 

As  Maeterlinck  puts  it  in  The  Unknown  Guest: 
"  For  the  present  it  (the  spiritistic  theory)  simply 
relegates  to  posthumous  regions  phenomena  that 
appear  to  occur  within  ourselves;  it  adds  super- 
fluous mystery  and  needless  difficulty  to  the  me- 
diumistic  mystery  w^hence  it  springs"  (page  55), 
and  ^^  Before  turning  toward  the  mystery  beyond 
the  grave  let  us  first  exhaust  the  possibilities  of 
the  mystery  here  on  earth  "  (page  57). 

§  2.  Spiritism  and  Love 

I  am  quite  aware  that  the  psychoanalyst  who 
would  thus  address  a  spiritist  is  in  the  position  of 
an  adult  trying  to  reason  with  a  youth  and  show 
him  the  impossible  things  he  says  and  feels  about  a 
girl  for  whom  he  has  developed  a  sudden  infatu- 
ation, but  who  is  intellectually  his  inferior  and  tem- 
peramentally actually  antipathetic.  Fired  by  his 
phantasies,  born  of  his  unconscious  wishes,  he  can- 
not in  most  cases  see  the  same  things  his  adviser 
sees  and  practically  is  unable  to  hear  the  argu- 
ments presented. 

For  I  shall  try  to  show  that  the  tendency  to  be- 


76  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

lieve  in  spirits  is  as  universal  and  as  strong  as  the 
tendency  of  youth  to  fall  in  love,  but  that  neither 
one  of  them  is  any  more  rational  than  the  other; 
that  the  original  impulse  to  attempt  scientifically 
to  prove  the  existence  of  disembodied  intelligences 
is  based  on  quite  as  deep  lying  unconscious  trends 
as  is  the  perfectly  normal  exaggeration  on  the 
lover's  part  concerning  the  supernal  qualities  of  his 
mistress ;  furthermore  that  a  scientific  proof,  if  such 
is  required,  is  as  far  from  a  person  in  such  a  state 
of  mind  as  prudence  and  moderation  of  thought  and 
action  are  to  U^e  imi)etuous  lover.  Indeed  the 
human  race  has  always  been  in  love  with  the  idea 
of  spirit,  and  I  shall  try  to  show  just  how  this  idea 
first  originated,  and  out  of  what  mechanisms  of  un- 
conscious thinking. 

As  these  mechanisms  have  been  discovered  by 
psychoanalysis  it  is  therefore  essential  that  any 
one  who  washes  to  be  in  a  position  to  make  an  au- 
thoritative statement  about  the  spirit  apart  from 
the  body  should  first  know  all  that  has  been  re- 
cently discovered  about  the  mind  in  the  body  —  a 
large  interrelation  of  facts  having  a  high  degree  of 
complexity  that  must  be  my  excuse  for  any  failure 
in  one  volume  adequately  to  represent  enough  of  it 
to  orient  the  reader  in  the  maze  of  statements  daily 
made  concerning  the  "  spirit." 

§  3.  What  Psychoanalysis  Is  Not 

I  shall  try  in  the  next  three  chapters  to  present  a 
brief  positive  outline  of  psychoanalytic  theory,  a 


PSYCHOANALYSIS  77 

theory  against  which  no  valid  objection  has  yet 
been  made  and  for  which  everything  so  far  sci- 
entifically observed  has  shown  the  strongest  pos- 
sible logical  proof.  Here,  as  a  preliminary,  I  feel 
it  necessary  to  present  some  negative  considera- 
tions. Psychoanalysis,  although  it  originated  in 
the  physician's  consulting  room,  and  is  as  yet,  as  a 
cure  for  mental  and  physical  ills  of  psychic  origin, 
properly  restricted  to  that  precinct,  is  not  any 
longer  merely  a  medical  affair.  Those  who  have 
clearly  seen  the  implications  of  Freud's  therapeutic 
measures  have  realized  that  the  acceptance  of  the 
theory  of  the  unconscious,  as  a  dynamic  hypothesis 
for  explaining  the  sequence  of  ideas,  emotions  and 
volitions  in  patients  mentally  disordered,  carries 
along  with  it  the  acceptance  of  still  more  inclusive  I 
laws  according  to  which  occur  the  conscious  mental 
states  of  the  absolutely  normal  person.  Psycho- 
analysis is  therefore  not  merely  a  method  of  restor- 
ing order  to  a  mind  diseased. 

Nor  is  it  a  justification,  as  has  not  infrequently 
been  illogically  inferred,  for  the  indiscriminate  or 
even  strictly  and  narrowly  illegal  gratification  of 
the  sexual  passions.  Freud's  deduction  that  neu-  ^ 
roses  were  the  perversion  of  the  sexual  instinct 
might  lead  some  who  had  firmly  repressed  it  against 
their  will  to  infer  that  he  recommended  their  rais- 
ing the  "  lid,"  so  to  speak,  and  attaining  physical 
health  through  sexual  license.  But  no  psycho- 
analyst of  repute  makes  that  inference,  even  though 
he  may  know,  as  eveiy  one  else  does,  that  true 


78  MAN^g  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

wholesomeness  of  society  exists  only  upon  the  basis 
of  a  union  of  man  and  woman  with  complete  fusion 
of  their  interests  in  the  lives  of  their  children. 

But,  more  than  all  that,  and  more  germane  to 
the  subject  of  spiritism,  is  the  consideration  that 
psychoanalysis  has  established  the  unconscious  as 
a  foundation  of  conscious  life,  and  that  no  conscious 
phenomenon  is  adequately  explained  without  ref- 
erence to  the  unconscious  life  behind  it,  any  more 
than  a  tree  is  only  that  part  of  it  which  is  above 
ground.  The  leaves  cannot  be  explained  without 
the  knowledge  that  there  are  roots,  and  conscious 
thinking,  feeling  and  willing  cannot  be  understood 
without  regard  to  the  unconscious  forces  that  moti- 
vate them. 

Therefore  we  must  repeat  and  most  emphatically 
insist  that  it  is  illogical  and  otiose  to  make  any 
statement  about  "  spirit ''  as  a  thing  apart  from 
matter  until  the  relations  of  spirit  and  matter  are 
more  thoroughly  understood,  as  they  exist  in  com- 
bination with  each  other  in  the  living  animal,  hu- 
man or  sub-human.  And  it  is  more  and  more  evi- 
dent that  the  majority  of  those  interested  in  psy- 
chical research  have  not,  in  their  consideration  of 
disembodied  spirit,  made  a  sufficient  study  of  em- 
bodied spirit.  It  may  eventually  appear  that  the 
embodied  variety  is  the  only  one  existent  anywhere. 

§  4.  Repression 

In  studying  the  phenomena  of  hysteria  the  psy- 
choanalysts were  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  at 


PSYCHOANALYSIS  79 

least  part  of  them  were  caused  by  the  action  of 
memories  of  past  events  or  experiences  that  had 
been  resolutely  thrust  back  by  the  patient  into  a 
part  of  his  mind  whence  they  were  never  recalled. 
To  this  thrusting  back  they  gave  the  name  repres- 
sion and  inferred  that  the  cause  of  it  was  the  un- 
pleasant or  fearful  nature  of  the  experiences  around 
which  the  never-recalled,  and  therefore  permanently 
unconscious,  memories  clustered.  This  was  the 
psychic  trauma  (wound)  theory,  and  the  cause  for 
many  nervous  troubles  was  sought  in  the  wound  to 
the  spirit  (psyche),  which,  as  were  found  in  some 
cases,  had  been  received  in  early  youth.  The  re- 
pressed ideas  and  emotions  of  the  medium  are  let 
out  in  the  only  way  possible  for  some  neurotics, 
from  the  unconscious  into  conscious  life,  and  still 
displaced.  They  are  displaced  not  upon  some  con- 
scious compensatory  idea,  as  in  the  neurosis,  but 
upon  an  idea  which  comes  into  consciousness  in  the 
trance  or  in  the  automatism  of  whatever  nature  it 
may  be. 

In  every  soul  struggle  is  found  the  drive  of  the 
unconscious  toward  external  expression,  not  neces-   j 
sarily  the  drive  of  the  unconscious  to  attain  con-  } 
sciousness  nor  the  craving  of  the  activities  below   j 
the  level  of  consciousness  to  enter  the  upper  spheres  * 
of  consciousness.     We  may  not  in  every  case  sup- 
pose that  the  craving  of  the  unconscious  is  simply 
to  appear  before  consciousness  as  if  the  latter  were 
a  king,  the  very  atmosphere  surrounding  whom  was 
a  source  of  pleasure,  honour  and  material  advantage. 


80  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

It  is  much  more  likely  that  our  vital  force  which  is 
fragmentarily  expressed  in  consciousness  is  quite 
as  satisfactorily,  as  far  as  the  unconscious  wish  is 
concerned,  expressed  in  movements  in  and  of  the 
body,  of  which  we  are  not  aware,  by  proliferation 
of  cells,  by  chemical  action,  by  physiological  proc- 
ess and  automatic  actions  of  all  varieties,  quite  as 
well  as  by  the  comparatively  few  tensions  and  re- 
laxations of  which  we  are  now  and  then  conscious. 

The  vital  force,  by  whatever  name  we  call  it,  is 
only  partly  striving  to  vitalize  inanimate  matter, 
and  its  onward,  progressive,  pushing  nature  is  only 
partly  concerned  with  transmitting  life  and  is  also 
indifferent  to  the  means  by  which  the  inward  drive 
is  externalized.  So  that  it  is  quite  as  well  satisfied, 
by  knocking  over  an  ash  barrel  in  the  street  as  by 
emitting  an  ovum.  Externality  is  its  goal,  and  it 
achieves  externality  quite  as  much  by  actions  that 
from  a  narrower  point  of  view  we  call  destructive 
as  those  we  call  constructive  or  creative. 

The  attainment  of  consciousness  in  the  sense  of 
the  unconscious  wish  of  one  person,  entering  an- 
other's consciousness  is  secured  by  the  medium's 
unconscious,  if  he  goes  into  a  trance  and  speaks 
or  writes  what  he  does  not  himself  become  con- 
scious of  directly,  and  other  people  hear  him  (or  see 
him)  express  through  automatic  speaking  or  writ- 
ing, but  what  he  later  becomes  conscious  of  through 
seeing  his  writing  or  hearing  other  people  tell  him 
his  own  words.  His  unconscious  wish  has  tra- 
versed one  of  the  paths  toward  externality  and  has 


PSYCHOANALYSIS  81 

arrived/si^  indicated  in  the  preceding  paragraph. 
There  are  many  other  paths.  The  medium's  vital 
force  has  secured  externality  indirectly,  as  far  as 
the  medium's  own  consciousness  is  concerned,  but 
just  as  directly,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  un- 
conscious, as  if  it  had  succeeded  in  presenting  the 
ideas  to  the  medium's  conscious  mind  without 
going  a  round-about  way  to  be  told  by  some  one 
else. 

But  whether  the  advancing  vital  urge  appears  to 
one  consciousness  (the  medium's)  or  to  another 
(the  observer's),  is  of  little  moment  so  long  as  it 
produces  its  external  effect  —  the  only  effect  that 
could  satisfy  the  desire  for  externality. 

Psychoanalysis  sees  the  dire  results  to  the  psyche 
that  come  from  the  failure  to  externalize,  and  its 
method  is  that  of  a  liberator,  and  its  technique 
consists  solely  in  removing  the  resistances  to  ex- 
pression that  are  imposed  by  conventional  society 
so  that  the  externalization  of  the  vital  urge  may  be 
whole  instead  of  fragmentary,  unitary  instead  of 
divergent,  and  socially  symbolic  instead  of  aso- 
cially,  where  it  has  to  be  symbolic. 

Whatever  the  vital  urge,  libido  (horm6),  elan 
vital)  may  be,  it  is  transformed  into  material  real- 
ity or  it  is  material  reality  in  motion  or  it  is  energy 
latent  or  free.  Its  most  highly  organized  expres- 
sion as  we  know  it  here  is  life,  and  to  declare  that 
it,  or  anything  so  analogous  to  it  is  a  spirit,  moves 
chairs  and  tables  and  plays  mandolins,  is  to  say 
that  something  that  had  not  life  before  is  suddenly 


82  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

and  unaccountably  presented  with  life  for  a  very 
brief  time  and  then  deprived  of  it  in  a  most  capri- 
cious manner.  If  this  were  an  instance  of  a  vital 
urge  that  was  yearning  for  externality  we  could 
imagine  an  easier  method  by  which  to  attain  it. 
But  psychoanalysis  regards  the  craving  for  life 
and  love  as  something  affecting  only  human  and 
animal  life,  and  is  concerned  solely  with  the  ex- 
pression of  that  craving  in  human  thought  and 
action.  So  its  aim  is  direct  expression  and  the 
indirect  way  of  the  medium  is  not  sought.  The 
particular  method  for  smoothing  the  path  of  the 
impulses  that  ever  strive  to  come  from  the  un- 
conscious into  the  world  of  externality,  is  the 
removing  of  the  resistance  which  is  caused  by 
fear  of  the  environment  or  of  certain  elements 
of  it.  As  soon  as  this  fear  is  removed  the  only 
obstacle  to  full  expression  is  cleared  away.  The 
unconscious  impulses  can  then  find  all  the  ex- 
ternal objects  necessary  to  absorb  it  all.  In 
an  absolutely  unrepressing  environment  every 
primal  instinct  would  be  immediately  followed  and 
what  we  call  society  would  be  an  impossibility.  In 
an  environment  as  repressive  as  most  civilized  com- 
munities the  natural  instincts  are  held  in  check, 
and  are  gratified  not  directly  but  indirectly  by  the 
symbolic  actions  which  liberate  the  same  amount 
of  energy  but  with  results  more  conformable  to  con- 
vention. The  medium's  method  of  giving  external- 
-^  .^y  ^Q  j^-g  unconscious  wishes  is  consequently  only 
one  of  the  many  indirect  methods,  and  has  not  more 


PSYCHOANALYSIS  83 

bearing  upon  the  existence  of  "  spirit "  outside  of 
his  body  than  the  blood  in  his  veins  has  connection 
with  the  water  in  the  "  canals  "  of  Mars. 

But  repression  shuts  in  the  vital  urge,  and  this 
implies  that  repression  prevents  the  entrance,  into 
consciousness,  of  many  images,  of  most  all,  in  fact, 
of  the  images  that  represent  the  infinity  of  impres- 
sions received  by  the  medium  for  the  entire  dura- 
tion of  his  corporate  existence  as  a  receptive  and  in- 
tegrating organism.  If  the  repression  were  com- 
pletely removed  every  past  experience  could  be  re- 
called by  the  appropriate  situation.  The  appropri- 
ate situation  is  such  a  combination  of  events  as  to 
call  for  the  revivification  of  the  given  memory. 
The  medium's  surroundings  in  a  trance,  and  the 
automatic  writer's  quiet  and  repose,  are  both  ap- 
propriate situations  for  the  removal  of  repression 
from  certain  sections  of  pa&t  memories,  because 
both  shift  the  responsibility  for  what  is  said,  done 
and  written  from  the  medium  and  autamatist  to 
some  other  "  personality,"  either  the  medium's 
"  control  "  or  the  dictating  "  spirit." 

Psychoanalytic  therapy  consists  in  removing,  as 
far  as-  possible,  the  resistances  caused  by  the  fear 
of  the  patient  to  express  his  unconscious  wishes, 
and  the  synthesis  is  then  accomplished  by  causing 
the  patient  himself  to  see  the  means  whereby  the 
unconscious  craving  may  receive  its  complete  grati- 
fication in  literal  forms,  where  these  do  not  violate 
the  requirements  of  convention,  or,  where  they  do, 
the  synthesis  aims  to  cause  him  to  secure  quite  as 


/ 


( 


84  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

adequate  satisfactions  in  symbolic  form,  thus  giv- 
ing him  an  ability  to  make  to  any  environment 
adaptations  whose  failure  has  been  the  true  cause 
of  his  illness. 

For  us  the  signific^t  fact  about  psychoanalytic 
therapeutic  methods  is  that  so  nlany  early  memories 
forgotten  for  many  years  were  brought  into  con- 
sciousness, that  quite  evidently  no  experience  what- 
/  ever  is  lost  by  the  mind  in  spite  of  apparent  forget- 
fulness.  In  other  words,  no  matter  what  has  been 
the  history  of  the  individual,  he  retains  in  his 
memory,  though  he  may  not  be  able  to  recall  to  con- 
sciousness, practically  everything  that  he  has  ever 
experienced,  whether  it  be  a  sensation  caused  by 
an  external  stimulus,  or  an  image,  or  idea,  that  has 
evolved  in  his  mind  years  before  as  a  recombina- 
tion of  other  sense  elements. 
^  It  is  also  a  significant  fact  that  the  conditions 

in  the  present  time  under  which  these  memories  are 
finally  recalled,  after  they  have  lain  dormant  for 
many  years,  are  quite  similar  to  the  conditions 
of  the  spiritistic  seance,  namely  quiet  and  subdued 
light.  And  in  the  earlier  psychoanalytic  technique 
they  used  hypnosis,  which  developed  the  various 
secondary Ipersonalities,  showing  that  the  memories 
repressed  had  tended  to  become  integrated  systems,  | 
that  had  many  of  the  characteristics  of  individual  j 
personalities.  Similarly  the  unconscious  memories 
of  the  medium  show  a  tendency  to  do  the  .same 
thing,  and  an  association  has  been  found  in  the 


PSYCHOANALYSIS  85 

minds  of  the  psychical  researchers  between  the  sec-        ' 
ondary  personality  and  the  abnormal. 

But  the  secondary  personality,  at  least  from  one 
point  of  view,  is  not  anything  abnormal  at  all.  To 
a  certain  extent  even  the  most  ordinary  so-called 
normal  human,  may  be  said  to  exhibit  a  dual  per- 
sonality in  his  commonplace  forgetfulness.  An  y 
idea  may  be  presented  to  a  very  opinionated  man, 
and  he  may  unconditionally  reject  it  as  impossible 
or  impracticable.  The  fact  that  it  is  antagonistic 
to  him  may  be  realized  with  varying  degrees  of 
consciousness.  That  is,  he  may  attribute  his  re- 
jection of  it  to  conscious  motives,  whereas  the  mo- 
tives in  this  case  are  largely  unconscious. 

Six  months  later  he  may  carry  out  the  idea  into 
action.  He  has  in  some  instances  then  forgotten 
the  origin  of  the  idea  and  it  bobs  up  into  his  own 
mind  without  being  associated  with  the  antagonis- 
tic personality  who  originally  suggested  it  to  him. 
He  then  accepts  it  as  his  own  idea,  supposes  he  has 
thought  it  all  out  himself,  and  forgets  that  it  was 
put  into  his  head  for  the  first  time  by  some  one 
whom  he  hates  or  hated. 

In  the  existence  of  this  idea  in  his  mind  during 
the  six  months  mentioned  we  see  the  nucleus  of  a 
dual  personality.  The  idea  had  a  compelling  force 
of  its  own,  so  to  speak,  and,  after  shaking  off  the 
unpleasant  associations  with  the  hated  man,  re- 
appears in  a  form  attractive  to  the  man  who  later 
carries  it  out.     None  of  us  can  successfully  trace  to 


86  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

their  sources  all  the  ideas  that  occur  to  us.  But 
with  the  proper  analytic  technique  some  of  these 
ideas  may  be  so  traced.  Effort  to  recall  past  scenes 
and  incidents  is  not  generally  well  sustained  by  the 
average  individual,  nor  is  the  truly  scientific 
method  of  so  doing  known  to  a  large  number  of  per- 
sons. If  they  did  know  how  to  do  so,  they  would 
be  able  to  understand  and  account  for  every  im- 
portant idea  and  action  of  their  lives. 

§  5.  The  Medium 

Ordinarily,  however,  we  lead  mentally  a  compara- 
tively irregular  existence,  stirred  to  action  by  mo- 
tives partially  accounted  for  and  by  blind  instincts 
and  compulsions.  The  thesis  of  this  book  is  that 
all  so-called  communications,  instead  of  being  from 
a  conscious  control  by  another  personality,  physic- 
ally separate  from  the  medium,  are  in  reality  from 
an  unconscious  control  by  a  secondary  or  subsidiary 
personality  of  the  medium  himself  or  herself.  In 
the  average  man  or  woman  leading  a  reasonably  ex- 
traversional  existence,  the  unconscious  wishes  do 
not  have  the  opportunity  to  become  compressed  into 
other  subsidiary  personalities.  In  the  medium, 
who  is  of  a  more  or  less  introversional  nature,  the 
unconscious  wishes  do  have  this  opportunity. 

The  medium  says:  "  The  spirits  of  A  and  B  and 
C  are  here;  is  there  any  one  of  them  with  whom 
you  would  particularly  care  to  communicate? " 
"  Well,''  says  the  unprejudiced  spectator,  ^^  I  knew 
B  when  he  was  alive.     Has  he  any  message  for 


I^,\' 


PSYCHOANALYSIS  87 

irie?"  And  the  medium,  whether  or  not  in  a 
trance,  proceeds  to  give  forth  information  about  B, 
the  triviality  of  which  is  considered,  by  those  most 
interested,  as  the  best  kind  of  evidence.  "  How  "7 
could  the  medium  have  known  the  kind  of  jack-  * 
knife  my  grandfather  cut  his  nails  with? ''  If  the 
medium  could  be  proved  not  to  have  been  able  to 
know  such  classes  of  things,  and  produces  more  of 
this  kind  of  information  than  could  be  accounted 
for  by  the  law  of  probability  of  lucky  guesses,  then 
the  communications  are  considered  proven.  It 
thus  turns  out  that  the  most  trivial  and  otherwise 
most  insignificant  details  acquire,  as  proofs,  the 
greatest  weight,  and  become  most  significant  in  the 
eyes  of  the  believers  of  spiritism.  It  is  much  like 
proving  a  line  of  beauty  by  means  of  minute  anat- 
omy of  the  human  form  possessing  it. 

And  it  is  to  be  noted  that  this  kind  of  so-called 
"  communication  '^  is  regarded  by  those  who  desire 
survival,  as  a  proof  of  the  survival,  in  some  inex- 
plicable and  indescribable  psychic  condition,  of  the 
soul  apart  from  the  body,  without  really  adequate 
scientific  knowledge  and  definition  of  what  the 
"  soul  '^  is,  when  it  is  in  the  body. 

§  6.  Unconscious  Trends 

As  will  later  be  seen,  there  are,  in  the  uncon- 
scious, various  trends  that  might  be  arranged  in  a 
sort  of  hierarchy  of  relative  strength.  One  of  these 
is  sex,  and  another  is  self.  Freud  has,  with  log- 
ical consistency,  reported  what  he  found  in  his 


88  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

patients,  and  has  come  to  the  conclusion  that  sex, 
interpreted  very  broadly,  is  the  main  unconscious 
motive  for  human  conscious  activity.  Jung,  the 
founder  of  the  Zurich  school  of  psychoanalysis,  says 
that  sex  and  other  unconscious  cravings  are  alike 
forms  of  another  and  higher  vital  urge.  Both 
agree  that  the  unconscious  craving,  whatever  it 
may  be  called,  is  seen  in  the  acts  and  conduct  of 
all  persons,  whether  they  be  conventional  actions 
or  the  most  unusual  type  of  behaviour  imaginable. 
The  most  sensational  of  the  eccentricities,  im- 
pulsive and  irrational  actions  are  seen  in  the  con- 
scious expression  of  the  unconscious  sex  wishes, 
and  some  psychoanalysts  have  revealed  these  so 
clearly  that  the  popular  mind  has  the  impression 
that  psychoanalysis  regards  them  as  the  sole  mo- 
tives for  all  conduct.  Therefore  the  opponents 
have  seized  upon  this  one  aspect  of  the  unconscious 
craving,  and  have  reasoned  fallaciously  as  follows, 
basing  their  statements  on  their  misconception  of 
the  doctrine  of  repression.  "  According  to  this 
theory  the  best  people  would  be  the  worst,  and 
vice  versa.  We  repress  what  we  will  not  have  in 
the  conscious  mind.  .  .  .  The  purest  minded  man 
or  woman,  then  —  according  to  this  doctrine  —  is 
not  the  one  who  has  the  purest  conscious  mind,  but 
the  purest  subconscious  mind  —  that  is,  one  who 
has  let  out  all  the  bad  it  contains,  and  retained 
none!  So  that  the  more  vilely  we  act,  the  more 
foul  mouthed  we  are,  the  purer  we  are  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact.     What  a  delightful  doctrine !    Does  it 


PSYCHOANALYSIS  89 

not  occur  to  the  Freudians  that  we  are  only  re- 
sponsible  for  the  content  of  our  conscious  minds? 
Unless  we  bring  the  contents  of  the  subconscious 
mind  to  the  light  and  gloat  over  it  as  the  Freudians 
do,  we  should  never  know  that  we  had  one  —  most 
of  us.  Yet  according  to  them,  this  is  the  man  — 
this  muck  heap  —  this  is  the  real  man!  "  (Here- 
ward  Carrington:  Modern  Psychical  Phenomena, 
N.  Y.  1919,  page  22.) 

Psychoanalysis  makes  no  such  statement  as  that 
the  best  people  are  the  worst  and  vice  versa,  re- 
garding as  it  does  all  people  as  being  in  the  main 
trends  of  their  unconscious  cravings  pretty  much 
alike,  the  chief  difference  probably  being  in  the 
relative  strength  of  these  cravings,  and  not  in  the 
specific  acts  in  which  they  are  expressed. 

Furthermore  it  is  not  alone  the  evil  propensities 
that  are  repressed,  but  in  not  a  few  people  good  im- 
pulses are  consciously  repressed  as  will  be  quite 
manifest  to  any  one  who  examines  carefully  his 
own  life.  As  if  realizing  that  wholesomeness  and 
^  good  feeling  alone  are  constructive  and  progressive, 
s  the  libido,  which  is  the  quintessence  of  what  in  its 
highest  form  is  love,  sends  up  from  the  most  funda- 
mental depths  many  an  impulse  to  do  a  friendly 
act,  which  some  conscious  fear  represses.  That 
only  the  asocial  act  and  thought  is  repressed  would 
never  be  asserted  by  any  analyst  in  good  repute, 
nor  that  the  unconscious  wish  is  wholly  bad. 

That  the  best  people  are  the  worst  is  far  too  sim- 
ple a  statement  to  represent  the  very  complicated 


90  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

relations  between  consciousness  and  the  uncon- 
scious. Also  it  appears  that  people  who  make  such 
'  statements  ignore,  or  are  ignorant  of,  the  principle 
of  sublimation  which  in  every  case  parallels  re- 
pression. Psychoanalysis  regards  the  unconscious 
wish  as  being  transformed  in  every  case  by  the 
social  environment,  beginning  in  earliest  infancy, 
taking  shape  and  specific  nature  from  the  manners 
and  customs  of  the  intimates  of  the  individual  per- 
sonality. This  process  which  diverts  the  wish  from 
a  merely  egoistic  one,  sublimates  the  desire,  which, 
though  changed  in  actual  content,  retains  its  primal 
force.  Thus  the  egoistic,  unconscious  craving  for 
mastery  is  transformed  or  sublimated  into  the  con- 
scious wish  for  constructive  leadership,  the  crassly 
sexual  is  sublimated  into  the  highest  forms  of  love. 

When  an  opponent  of  psychoanalysis,  which 
means  one  who  does  not  understand  it,  or  who  fears 
it,  says  that  we  repress  what  we  will  not  have  in 
the  conscious  mind,  he  errs  in  not  saying  we  re- 
press what  we  fear  to  have  in  the  conscious  mind. 
And  fear  may  be  attached  by  any  person  to  almost 
anything,  depending  on  the  situation  in  which  he 
finds  himself.  And  if  it  is  true  that  we  repress 
into  the  unconscious  what  we  will  not  have  in  the 
conscious  mind,  we  are  guided  as  to  what  we  will 
by  the  opinions  of  other  people,  rarely  or  never  by 
^our  own,  the  moral  norm  being  set  by  the  environ- 
ment. 

Thus  the  fear  is  the  fear  of  the  disapproval  or 
other  hostile  action  of  others  with  whom  we  live 


PSYCHOANALYSIS  91 

in  contact.  Or  it  may  be  the  fear  we  feel  toward 
the  disapproval,  etc.,  of  some  imaginary  personal- 
ity —  some  personality  we  have  rationally  or  irra- 
tionally constructed  out  of  our  own  impressions, 
true  or  false.  This  personality  may  indeed  be  the 
ideal  we  have  formed  of  ourselves  as  we  should  like 
to  be.  Then  we  say  we  fear  to  do  something  out 
of  self-respect,  we  scorn  such  actions,  we  are  too 
proud  to  think  such  thoughts;  but  the  whole  sit- 
uation, whether  real  or  imaginary,  whether  it  con- 
sists of  ideas,  or  desires,  is  controlled  by  fear,  or 
some  might  call  it  aversion,  against  doing  or  think- 
ing of  certain  kinds.  Thus  a  very  courageous  per- 
son might  not  like  to  use  the  word  fear  about  him- 
self, but  would  say  that  the  actions  he  considered 
ignoble  were  beneath  him.  And  in  any  case, 
whether  they  are  the  thoughts  or  actions  of  a 
courageous  or  a  timid  person,  they  are  repressed 
into  the  unconscious.  The  evil  thoughts  or  im- 
pulses which,  if  he  followed  them  out,  would  lead 
either  kind  of  person  to  do  ill,  may  originate  within 
his  own  personality,  i.  e.,  in  his  own  unconscious 
or  they  may  be  suggested  to  him  from  without,  by 
evil  companions,  for  example.  In  the  latter  case 
the  evil  impulses  contained  within  the  unconscious, 
after  having  been  repressed  into  it,  would  be  both 
endogenous  and  acquired. 

So.  that  a  good  person,  according  to  the  misstate- 
ment above  quoted,  would  be  still  better  if  the  evil 
impulses  originating  within  were  increased  by  some 
others  originating  without.     He  would  increase  his 


92  MAN^S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

goodness  by  accumulating  repressed  evil  that  was 
gathered  from  as  many  extraneous  sources  as  pos- 
sible. He  would  become  better  by  more  and  more 
closely  associating  with  criminals,  receiving  by 
force  of  example  more  and  more  anti-social  im- 
pulses and  repressing  them  into  his  unconscious  as 
he  received  them.  Only  in  this  way  could  he  im- 
prove his  character,  according  to  the  misstatements 
noticed  above. 

Therefore  I  wish  to  utter  a  warning  as  definite 
and  emphatic  as  possible,  that  those  who  represent 
psychoanalysis  as  teaching  any  such  contradictory 
doctrine  are  completely  misrepresenting  it.  Never 
having  themselves  been  analysed,  they  have  no  in- 
side knowledge  of  what  are  the  real  aims  of  psycho- 
analysis, and  they  fear  what  psychoanalysis  may 
ultimately  prove  about  the  ideas  they  have  accepted. 


CHAPTEE  IV 

THE   UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN   URGE 

§  1.  Resistance  to  Knowledge 

There  are  several  reasons  why  people  in  general, 
and,  among  them,  spiritists,  should  be  unwilling  to 
learn  the  main  facts  that  have  been  thus  far  sci- 
entifically ascertained  about  the  unconscious.  One 
of  these  reasons  is  the  at  first  unpleasant,  not  to 
say  horrible,  nature  of  the  facts  themselves,  re- 
garded from  a  purely  conventional  standpoint.  To 
say  that  in  each  of  us  there  lives  not  merely  a  cave 
man  or  w^oman  but  a  Titan  of  heroic  force,  just 
"  under  the  skin  "  and  that  a  little  amount  of  ob- 
servation and  study  will  reveal  him  to  any  one  of 
us  is  saying  something  that  the  average  person  will 
not  take  any  interest  in  hearing,  but  I  shall  later 
show  that  it  is  indispensable  for  those  interested  in 
spiritism  to  know  as  much  of  it  as  they  can. 

The  other  cause  for  the  unwillingness  of  the  av-        V 
erage  person  to  learn  the  main  facts  of  the  working 
of  the  unconscious  mentality  is  their  exceeding  com- 
plexity. 

One  of  the  problems  of  mathematics  most  re- 
luctantly attacked  by  young  people  in  school  is  that 
of  permutations  and  combinations,  a  problem  that 
is  presented  to  them  by  enthusiastic  pedagogues 
too  early,  before  they  are  consciously  capable  of 

93 


/ 


94  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

continuing  a  strain  of  attention  too  long.  The 
teacher  of  almost  any  object  finds  the  question: 
"  In  how  many  and  in  what  orders  can  three  dif- 
ferent items  be  presented?"  an  almost  insuperable 
matter  to  the  pupil  even  of  high  school  age, 
although  the  clear  view  of  such  a  question  not  only 
makes  much  compyehensible  that  was  not  so  before, 
but  also  this  slight  mental  gymnastic  exercise  when 
completely  mastered  even  simplifies  much  of  the 
matter  to  be  studied,  and  gives  a  feeling*  of  power 
quite  satisfying.  But  only  a  few  people  can  be 
induced  to  do  even  this  slight  amount  of  mental 
work,  which  is  different  from  merely  straight  re- 
membering. Mere  memory  allows  the  mind  to  glide 
along  a  beaten  path  from  one  image  to  another, 
and  in  most  people  is  the  easiest  of  mental  work. 
But  ask  them  to  change  the  order  of  the  items  ac- 
cording to  a  certain  plan  and  the  mental  energy 
required  to  do  this  is  unavailable,  because  so  much 
has  already  been  used  up  in  the  usual  uncontrolled 
phantasy  type  of  memory.  The  mere  vision  of 
thi:ee  objects  in  all  possible  orders  as : 

abc,  acb,  bac,  bca,  cab,  cba, 

fills  the  mind  with  an  uneasy  sense  of  perplexity 
and  instinctively  the  child's  and  many  adults'  minds 
shrink  from  the  mental  strain  of  continuing  the 
necessary  mental  effort.  To  require  a  beginning 
Latin  student  to  write  or  even  say : 

Caesar  bellum  facit. 
Caesar  facit  bellum. 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE        95 

Bellum  Caesar  facit. 
Bellum  facit  Caesar. 
Facit  Caesar  bellum. 
Facit  bellum  Caesar. 

and  to  realize  that  they  all  mean  practically  the 
same,  differing  only  in  emphasis,  is  an  almost  in- 
human requirement,  although  an  ability  to  do  this 
is  indicative  of  a  high  degree  of  mental  control  and 
helps  to  fix  the  functions  of  the  Latin  cases. 

In  learning  a  foreign  language  or  even  a  bit  of 
grammar  in  English,  the  same  complexity  of  ma- 
terial and  simplicity  of  mental  state  of  the  learner 
is  found.  Take  the  elementary  sentence:  Tom 
steals  a  pig,  and  ask  any  child,  that  knows  the  dif- 
ference between  active  and  passive,  to  change 
merely  the  form  of  the  sentence,  from  active  to  pas- 
sive, but  retain  exactly  the  same  idea,  and  you  will 
find  that  many  will  say  Tom  stole  the  pig,  confus- 
ing past  with  passive,  or  The  pig  stole  Tom,  just 
reversing  the  sense.  Very  rarely  will  you  get  the 
first  time  the  correct  answer :  The  pig  is  stolen  by 
Tom.  The  further  transformations  that  are  pos- 
sible in  expressing  practically  the  same  ideas  with 
(1)  a  simple  sentence  or  (2)  a  complex  sentence^ 
are  complexities  of  variously  increasing  manifold- 
ness.  Thus  Tom,  the  piper's  son,  steals  a  pig,  has 
to  be  made  into  a  complex  sentence  of  exactly  the 
same  meaning  Tom,  who  is  the  piper's  son,  steals 
a  pig.  In  this  transformation  the  appositive,  "  the 
piper's  son  "  is  turned  into  a  relative  clause.     If 


96  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

a  child  is  told  to  turn  "  piper's  "  into  a  preposi- 
tional phrase  modifying  "  son/'  just  as  "  the 
piper's  "  does,  he  is  generally  non-plussed  and  only 
after  some  very  unwilling  effort  on  his  part  can  he 
be  made  to  see  that  Tom,  who  is  the  son  of  the  piper, 
is  what  is  wanted.  All  these  changes,  simple  as 
they  appear  to  the  trained  English  student,  are  pos- 
sible to  the  simple  mind  only  with  great  effort. 

There  is  a  game  called  "  Packing  My  Bag."  In  a 
circle  of  people  one  starts  saying:  "I  packed  my 
bag,  putting  into  it  a  tooth  brush  " ;  the  next  says : 
"  I  put  into  it  a  tooth  brush  and  a  hair  brush  " ;  the 
third :  *^  I  put  in  a  tooth  brush,  a  hair  brush  and  a 
comb."  The  fourth  repeats  the  three  articles  and 
adds  another,  and  so  on  until  the  bag  contains  so 
many  articles  that  some  one  person  will  either  leave 
one  out  or  mention  it  in  the  w^rong  order.  For 
some  people  the  game  exercises  only  a  certain  kind 
of  memory,  which  normally  breaks  down  after  a 
while,  but  in  all  the  players  there  is  required  a  kind 
of  concrete  thinking  of  a  very  low  order,  but  still 
straining  the  attention.  Various  people's  reaction 
to  this  game  is  variously  amusing  and  edifying. 

In  the  game  the  strain  is  that  of  keeping  their 
minds  on  one  thing  (the  series  of  articles)  ;  in  the 
grammar  exercise  it  is  not  merely  remembering 
Tom,  the  piper's  son,  steals  a  pig,  but  remembering 
the  whole  of  it  and  changing  a  part  of  it.  Both 
"  Tom,  the  piper's  son  "  and  "  Tom,  the  son  of  the 
piper,"  have  to  be  kept  in  consciousness  at  the  same 
time.     That  is  the  cause  of  the  strain.     Conscious- 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE        97 

ness,  like  a  spring  hinge,  has  to  be  opened  to  take  in 
two  things  at  once  side  by  side,  so  to  speak,  and  it 
does  not  naturally  do  that.  Naturally  it  takes  in 
only  one  thing  at  a  time.  Minds  have  to  be  arti- 
ficially stretched  to  accommodate  at  once  con- 
sciously more  than  a  single  unitary  experience. 
Even  the  mechanic  of  average  ability  is  unable  to 
use  two  wrenches  at  once,  one  in  the  right  hand 
and  one  in  the  left. 

To  every  single  idea  the  whole  body  responds 
as  an  integral  unit  with  a  single  muscular  set  or 
"  postural  tonus,''  and  two  ideas  side  by  side  cause 
at  first  a  real  physical  dead-lock,  which,  in  the 
phrase  Tom,  the  son  of  the  piper,  is  increased  by 
the  fact  that  it  is  not  the  original  or  real  phrase. 
Any  change  is  making  something  into  something 
that  it  is  not,  and  such  a  change  is  one  that  goes 
against  the  whole  muscular  set  of  the  entire  body, 
particularly  if  that  muscular  set  is  associated  with 
any  degree  of  comfort  or  pleasurable  emotion. 

Any  exercise  done  and  accomplished,  even  with 
a  mistake  in  it,  is  associated  with  comfort  or  pleas- 
ure just  because  it  is  accomplished.  To  correct 
the  error  negates  that  pleasure.  To  change  what 
is  produces  discomfort  and  displeasure  in  the  ma- 
jority of  young  people,  and  is  not  undertaken  vol- 
untarily. Here  again  the  complicated  external 
world  produces  a  simple  organic  reaction  in  the 
mind-body  combination.  In  order  to  change  the 
complexity  of  an  external  thing  (here  a  set  of 
words)  the  child  has' to  produce  in  himself  a  change 


98  MAN'B  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

of  his  whole  muscular  set.  He  has  to  feel  different, 
and  he  does  not  naturally  want  to  feel  different, 
because  feeling  the  same  is  easy  and  therefore  pleas- 
urable, and  feeling  different  is  hard  and  therefore 
unpleasant. 

Similarly  if  he  has  put  down : 

72 
38 

574 
216 


2634 


and  has  taken  satisfaction  out  of  the  fact  that  it  is 
down  and  done,  he  will  naturally  revolt,  to  the  con- 
fines of  his  being,  when  he  is  told  that  the  first 
thing,  and  the  next  to  the  last,  are  wrong,  and  that 
if  it  were  dollars  he  would  be  out  |102. 

The  pleasure  of  completion  attaches  to  whatever 
is  completed.  Therefore  if  it  is  completed  wrongly, 
in  any  detail,  it  is  a  cause  of  displeasure  to  be  re- 
quired to  change  it.  The  necessary  conclusion 
from  this  is  that  in  educating  the  young,  one  has  to 
aim  both  at  getting  a  correct  version  the  first  time, 
and  at  associating  pleasure  with  the  act  of  chang- 
ing or  correcting  the  young  person's  performance,  if 
it  should  be  wrong.  The  pleasure  ordinarily  asso- 
ciated with  the  act  of  correcting  is  generally  the 
pleasure  of  the  teacher.  But  what  I  mean  here  is 
pleasure  on  the  part  of  the  learner.     Getting  this 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE        99 

pleasure  is  getting  the  best  out  of  external  reality. 
Here  external  reality  in  the  shape  of  words  actually 
spoken  or  written,  sums  added  or  even  thoughts 
thought  if  they  be  thought  according  to  the  com- 
plicated modes  in  which  things  in  the  real  world 
exist, —  external  reality  is  the  only  wholesome  ob^ 
ject  for  the  psyche  to  function  against,  without 
which  object  it  never  grows  but  remains  infantile, 
spending  itself  introversionally  in  idle  phantasying. 
The  psychical  researcher  is  phantasying  all  the 
time. 

Education  is  a  training  of  the  mind  like  a  vine 
on  a  trellis,  but  the  true  education  not  only  trains 
the  vine  upon  the  trellis  but  makes  first  the  trellis 
to  train  the  vine  on.  Back  of  that  still  is  the  idea 
in  the  mind  of  the  deviser  of  the  trellis,  and  that 
idea  must  be  formed  in  a  way  to  carry  out  some 
union  of  psyche  and  object. 

§  2.  Complexity/ 

Natural  curiosity  will  not  carry  far.  It  is  easily 
satisfied.  Many  a  child's  curiosity  extends  only  far 
enough  to  test  its  own  strength,  as  to  whether  it 
can  break  this  or  that  thing.  A  curiosity  to  see 
things  go  around  is  partly  that;  but  partly  of  a 
slightly  higher  order,  if  it  tries  to  find  out  why  one 
of  a  series  of  meshed  wheels  goes  one  way  and  the 
next  another.  To  find  out  how  many  times  one 
goes  around  while  another  is  going  once,  would,  in 
connection  with  other  traits,  show  a  very  high  order 
of  mentality. 


V 


100        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

Curiosity  is  only  one  form  of  mental  activity, 
and  refers  outward  or  inward  indifferently.  Those 
I  whose  mental  energy  takes  an  exclusively  or  pre- 
dominantly outward  direction  have  been  scientists 
and  have  discovered  many  facts  about  the  external 
world,  including  the  relations  of  thoughts,  that  are 
of  the  greatest  advantage  to  all  persons  who  can 
properly  assimilate  these  facts.  The  grossest  of 
these  are  the  discoveries  and  inventions  of  the  phys- 
ical sciences  of  today,  as  a  result  of  which  there  has 
been  so  much  constructive  and  destructive  mechan- 
ical work  done.  The  gross  physical  inventions  and 
discoveries  can  be  assimilated  by  very  ordinary 
minds.  But  there  are  other  scientific  discoveries 
which  concern  solely  the  human  psyche  —  discov- 
eries that  cannot  be  easily  assimilated  by  the  mind 
without  a  high  degree  of  mental  energy.  The  tele- 
graphs, telephones,  railways  and  factories  show 
that  this  kind  of  invention  can  be  handled  by  almost 
any  one. 

But  it  is  not  so  with  the  latest  psychological  con- 
ceptions, nor  with  the  most  recent  conceptions  in 
pure  physics,  e.  g.,  the  theories  of  Einstein.  And 
the  concepts  of  the  most  modern  psychology  of  the 
unconscious  also  require  for  their  assimilation  si 
high  degree  of  ability  to  think  two  or  even  more 
series  of  thoughts  at  the  same  time.  The  concepts? 
of  psychoanalysis  are  more  complicated  than  thoso 
used  in  any  other  set  of  principles,  just  because  tho 
human  system  is  more  complicated  than  any  othef ' 
vital  system  in  the  world. 


/ 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  UI^GE      lOi 

§  3.  Non-conscious  Ideas  and  Feelings 

The  existence  of  ideas  and  feelings,  even  though 
they  are  not  in  consciousness,  is  an  absolutely  in- 
icontestable  fact.  Saying  that  they  are  in  con- 
sciousness may  be  a  figure  of  speech,  but  represents 
a  real  fact,  without  which  no  experience  is  pos- 
sible. When  they  are  not  "  in  "  consciousness^  they 
are  in  some  other  place,  which  we  call  the  "  Un- 
conscious." Whether  it  is  a.  place  or  not,  or 
whether  w^e  imagine  the  ideas  and  feelings  as  merely 
dormant  cells  in  brain  or  nerves,  which,  when  elec-^ 
trified,  produce  consciousness,  matters  little.  At 
any  rate  the  point  is  that,  like  moths  about  a  light 
at  night,  these  things  we  call  ideas,  thoughts,  feel- 
ings or  any  other  mental  state  or  activity,  come  and  V  / 
go,  and  have  just  as  real  an  existence,  whether  or  ^  ^  V^ 
not  they  have  previously  been  seen  or  in  any  other 
way  apperceived. 

A  certain  amount  of  energy  is  necessary  of  course  \ 
ta  make  a  transit  from  the  unconscious  into  con-     \ 
scions  life,  or,  in  other  words,  for  a  stimulus  to 
cause  an  actual  sensation.     An  enormous  amount 
of  physical  energy  is  probably  absorbed  from  the  ex-- 
ternal  world  and  transformed  into  mental  activity  V 

which  never  reach-es  consciousness.  Proofs  for  the  -^"""^^ 
unconscious  mentality  are  unnecessary  to  give  here, 
as  they  are  amply  given  in  other  books-.  No  psy- 
choanalytical investigation  is  ever  carried  on  with-  / 
out  discovering  an  unconscious  mental  activity 
which  has  attached  itself  to  some  bodily  function 
instead  of  being  liberated  into  consciousness,  or 


102        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

into  tlie  external  world  through  movement  (uncon- 
scious) or  action  (conscious). 

The  pressure  of  external  stimuli  upon  the  sen- 
sorium  is  only  partly  transformed  into  conscious- 
ness. A  great  part  of  the  effects  of  natural  ex- 
ternal causes,  chemical,  mechanical  and  other,  is 
turned  into  bodily  heat,  the  formation  of  various 
tissues  and  their  secretions.  What  is  turned  into 
consciousness  would,  in  view  of  the  comparatively 
late  appearance  of  consciousness  in  animal  evolu- 
tion, be  a  very  small  part  of  the  energy  which  is  im- 
pinging upon  the  various  receptor  organs  of  the 
body,  both  external  and  internal.  Those  amounts 
of  physical  energy  which  fail  to  attain  that  mini- 
mum degree  of  summation  which  makes  them  avail- 
able for  transmutation  into  consciousness,  do  never- 
theless constitute  a  very  valuable  and  potent  source 
of  change  and  development  in  the  human  psyche. 

We  may  regard  consciousness  itself  as  in  some 
sense  analogous  to  a  light  in  a  dark  night  which 
makes  things  visible  to  the  eye.  A  small  candle 
will  illuminate  only  a  very  small  area,  a  stronger 
though  more  distant  light  may  give  greater  illumi- 
nation over  a  greater  area.  The  animal  life  is  at- 
tracted by  the  light.  Those  living  things  which 
have  the  greatest  curiosity  will  come  nearest  to  the 
light  and  be  most  clearly  visible.  But  the  others 
exist  and  nature's  grand  economy  is  not  altered 
even  if  no  candle  or  arc  light  is  present.  Thus  we 
may  regard  the  groups  of  energy  ordered  into  or- 
ganisms which  unite  to  form  the  greater  organism 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      103 

of  the  human  body.     They  come  into  existence  and    j 
perform  their  functions  whether  or  not  they  are/ 
illuminated  with  the  light  of  consciousness.     But 
we  believe  that  psychoanalytic  technique  is  anal*- 
ogous  to  the  intensification  of  the  light  in  the  forest 
at  night. 

If  we  had  certain  friends  who  displeased  us,  and 
we  sent  them  away  from  us  into  the  dark  so  that 
we  could  not  see  them,  we  might  find  that  they  later 
turned  into  enemies  and  conspired  with  creatures 
of  darkness  to  undo  us.  This  is  the  nature  of  the 
activity  of  the  emotions  that  are  repressed  into 
the  unconscious.  On  the  other  hand  an  increase  in 
the  candle  power  of  the  light  we  were  carrying 
might  render  visible  some  opposing  forces  lurking 
in  the  underbrush,  which  after  observation  and 
planning  and  training  might  be  turned  into  friendly 
powers  in  place  of  being  hostile.  There  is  nothing 
like  illumination  for  turning  obstructions  into  a 
good  roadbed. 

So  that  the  conclusion  is  reached  that  conscious- 
ness may  be  extended  in  the  sense  not  only  of  sud-  \ 
den  expansion  like  the  intensification  of  light  just  / 
mentioned,  but  also  of  a  possibility  of  moving  about,  / 
from  one  place  to  another  in  the  night  of  the  uncon- 
scious, a  light  of  constant  candle  power.     Such  a 
person  would  be  one  who  was  willing  to  take  his 
light  in  hand  and  fare  forth  in  the  night  in  quest 
of  adventure.     There  are  persons,  too,  whose  light, 
through  love,  becomes  suddenly  brighter  and  there 
are  others,  the  geniuses,  whose  light  is  originally, 


c 


104        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

and  for  ever  remains,  intense,  so  tliat  they  see  more 
clearly  and  more  deeply  into  the  nature  of  things 
and  their  causes. 

There  is  a jpitch.of  activity  of  the  unconscious 
mind  which  cannot  be  raised  without  making  it 
either  visible  or  audible  or  perceptible  in  some  other 
sense  quality.     This  represents  consciousness,  as 
^^      it  were,  as  a  stationary  thing  with  other  things  com- 
ing to  meet  it.     If  being  furnished  with  a  compara- 
tively large  amount  of  energy,  they  succeed  in  ap- 
proaching near  enough  to  the  aura  of  consciousness, 
they  may  be  said  to  enter  consciousness  of  them- 
selves.    But  consciousness  may  be  regarded,  too, 
A       as  going  out  to  meet  things,  in  which  respect,  while 
^    things  are  not  stationary  and  some  even  flee  at  the 
approach  of  consciousness,  they  may  still  be  illu- 
minated by  its  light  and  become  visible. 

Such  fugitive  mental  elements  are  the  internal 
sensations.     They  flee  at  the  approach  of  conscious- 
ness.    Not  only  do  they  not  enter  consciousness,  but 
many  of  them  may  not  be  caught.     We  are  forced, 
however,  to  infer  their  existence  and  somewhat  of 
their  nature.     We  deduce  certain  modes  of  their 
activity  and  give  names  to  them,  and  the  act  of  nam- 
ing them  tends  to  give  them  a  "  local  habitation  " 
and  a  clearer  conception  of  their  functions.     We 
/  get  thereby  a  means  of  controlling  them  simply  by 
i    naming  them,  almost  as  if  in  so  doing  we  organized 
^  them  and  thus  created  out  of  an  apparent  chaos  an 
organism  or  unit  which  before  did  not  exist.     As  in 
algebra  we  perform  many  operations  with  unknown 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      105 

quantities  before  we  know  their  value,  so  we  do  in 
the  study  of  the  unconscious  perform  many  opera- 
tions according  to  discovered  principles  before  we 
can  tell  just  what  the  nature  and  value  of  the  un- 
known quality  is  in  concrete  and  sensory  terms. 

I  said  that  a  great  amount  of  physical  energy  is 
absorbed  from  the  external  world  and  transformed 
into  a  kind  of  mental  energy  which  never  succeeds    ' 
in  reaching  consciousness.     It  may  be  objected  that 
the  energy  which  does  not  reach  consciousness  can 
in  no  sense  be  called  mental.     Perhaps  I  should 
call  it  potentially  mental  energy.     That  absorbed 
into  the  body  from  the  external  world  may  be  said 
to  be  on  the  pathway  toward  becoming  mental  in^ 
a  sense  impossible  for  the  sunlight  to  be  called  po- 
tentially mental,  when  it  melts  a  piece  of  ice.     Pos-     O 
sibly  the  animal  organism  is  destined  ultimately        * 
to  evolve  into  a  perfect  mechanism  for  transform- 
ing into  mental  energy  or  consciousness  all  the 
energy  which  affects  it.     Evidently  that  end  has 
not  yet  been  reached,  but  every  form  of  physical 
energy  that  enters  the  human  body  through  the 
multitudinous  avenues  is  taking  the  first  upward 
step  toward  transmutation  into  pure  consciousness, 
just  as  the  clod  "  climbs  to  a  soul  in  grass  and     _^    . 
flowers."     In  this  light  every  particle  of  human       ^.J 
tissue  is  a  source  of  at  least  potential  mental  (even  jt=:(rX 
conscious)  energy. 

What  then  is  it  that  will  actively,  from  the  con- 
scious side,  help  to  transform  more  of  that  poten- 
tially   mental    into   perceptively   actively   mental 


.   106      man;s  unconscious  spikit 

(i.  e.,  conscious)  energy?  This  includes  the  ques- 
tion as  to  what  will  render  conscious  the  stimuli 
exciting  not  only  the  external  peripheral  sense  or- 
gans but  also  the  internal  peripheral  sense  organs. 
Or,  otherwise  stated,  what  will  render  conscious 
the  internal  impressions  so  as  to  enable  them  to  be 
perceived  as  conscious  sensations?  The  answer  to 
the  last  question  will  be  the  same  as  that  concern- 
ing the  rendering  conscious  of  any  external  sensa- 
tion, i.  e.,  by  means  of  the  attention  being  directed 
to  it  by  ideas  expressed  in  words. 

A  good  illustration  of  the  practically  creative 
effect  of  verbally  directed  (conceptually  directed) 
attention  is  the  creation  of  constellations  in  the 
stars  of  the  night.  The  ancient  way  was  to  imagine 
that  some  hero  was  taken  up  into  heaven  and  placed 
there  as  a  constellation.  This  expressed  the  fact 
that  then  for  the  first  time  were  those  infinitely  dis- 
tant suns  grouped  mentally  by  the  hearers  of  the 
myth.  A  modern  parallel  is  heard  every  time  a 
child  is  shown  the  dipper  on  a  summer  evening. 
Before  this  breathless  occasion  it  is  quite  likely 
that  the  child  has  seen  but  been  unconscious  of  all 
the  seven  stars.  But  after  it,  what  had  been  po- 
tentially mental  becomes  actually  mental  or  con- 
scious. 

§  4.  R^assodation 

Similarly  we  are  taught  not  only  to  reassociate 
consciously  perceived  emotions  with  ideas  other 
than  those  with  which  they  were  originally  asso- 
ciated, but  we  are  taught  to  feel  emotions  of  which, 


r. 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      107 

previous  to  instruction,  we  were  totally  uncon- 
scious, and  this  in  addition  to  the  emotions  so 
numerous  at  the  time  of  puberty,  which  force  them- 
selves upon  us  in  forms  consciously  mental  to  be 
sure,  but  many  degrees  removed  from  the  direct 
causes. 

Those  who  read  the  steadily  accumulating  litera-  ^ 
ture  on  the  sexual  instinct  cannot  but  be  impressed 
by  the  multifariousness  of  the  ways  by  which  the 
instinct  enters  consciousness,  to  what  remarkable 
ideas  and  inferences  it  gives  rise,  and  how  the  same 
condition  inspires  one  person  with  repugnance  and 
another  with  pleasure ;  furthermore  how  frequently 
in  the  same  person  a  sensation  evidently  caused  by 
a  purely  sexual  internal  sensation  can  be  trans- 
formed from  a  pleasure  into  a  pain  and  vice  versa. 

In  this  we  have  a  very  strong  proof  not  only  of 
the  existence  of  potentially  mental  states  in  this 
sphere  (and  why  not  also  in  any  others?),  but  also 
of  the  ready  .transmutability  of  the  feeling  into  its 
opposite;  unless  indeed  we  choose  to  believe  that 
pleasure  and  pain,  as  they  are  productive  of  ana- 
bolism  and  catabolism  respectively,  are  the  con- 
scious forms  of  two  separate  and  mutually  exclusive 
internal  sensations.  "^    "" 

§  5.  Occurrence 

The  occurrence  into  consciousness  of  things  that 
have  been  perceived  unconsciously  before  is  a  very 
noticeable  phenomenon.  I  am  sitting  thinking  and 
suddenly  realize  that  it  is  5.15,  at  which  time  I  am 


108        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

to  ^  something  different.  I  am  asleep  in  bed  and 
suddenly  wake  up  and  find  it  is  '6.30  at  which  time 
I  had  determined  to  get  up  this  morning.  I  am 
talking  with  a  person,  listening  and  replying,  and 
suddenly  get  the  idea  that  he  is  insincere  in  what 
he  says.  I  am  reading  in  the  winter  afternoon  and 
suddenly  realize  that  it  is  too  dark  to  read  with 
comfort,  and  I  turn  on  the  light.  I  am  going  into 
a  store  to  buy  something  and  suddenly  realize  that 
I  have  not  enough  cash  with  me.  I  am  working 
with  the  greatest  enthusiasm  and  suddenly  note 
that  I  am  both  hungry  and  stiff  and  tired.  I  am 
talking  with  a  girl  and  suddenly  realize  that  her 
teeth  or  her  eyes  ( or  anything  else  I )  are  much  pret- 
tier than  I  had  ever  thought  them  before.  I  was 
listening  to  a  new  record  on  a  phonograph.  I 
thought  it  was  the  AngePs  Serenade  of  Braga, 
when  suddenly  to  my  chagrin  I  realized  that  it  was 
the  Bach-Gounod  Ave  Maria. 

All  these  are  sudden  entries  into  consciousness, 
some  of  them  with  and  some  without  an  emotional 
tone.  But  they  are  entrances  of  something  which 
was  in  the  unconscious  a  minute  before.  In  the 
case  of  the  day  growing  darker,  there  was  a  dimin- 
ishing stimulus.  In  that  of  the  girl  there  was  an 
increasing  stimulus,  in  that  of  the  absence  of  money 
an  unchanging  stimulus!  In  all  cases,  however, 
the  stimulus  was  present,  in  the  unconscious  part 
of  the  mind,  quite  a  while  before  it  came  into  con- 
sciousness. So  it  appears  to  make  no  difference 
what  the  change  in  stimulus  is,  or  whether,  as  in 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  UKGE      109 

the  case  of  the  money,  there  is  no  change!  For 
consciousness  however  to  continue,  there  must  be  a 
change  in  consciousness,  as  it  has  been  shown  over 
and  over  again  that  without  change  of  quality  there 
is  no  consciousness. 

The  change  then  must  be  in  me.  In  the  money 
illustration  the  change  is  because  a  new  desire  for 
money  has  developed  in  me.  In  the  case  of  the 
girl,  she  has  talked  with  me  long  enough  for  me  to 
note  unconsciously  her  hair,  her  forehead,  her  nose, 
her  chin,  her  neck,  her  ears.  There  has  been  a 
change  in  the  number  of  stimuli  entering  conscious- 
ness. They  have  become  more  numerous.  In  the 
case  of  the  approaching  darkness  there  has  been  a 
change  in  real  things.  The  light  has  actually 
grown  less,  and  it  has  required  more  and  more 
effort  on  my  part  to  see  things.  In  the  case  of  the 
sudden  realization  of  the  time  of  day,  the  change 
is  entirely  mental.  I  mean  the  change  which  is 
constituted  by  the  sudden  realization  of  the  time  of 
day.  It  is  entirely  a  matter  of  my  own  action  and 
reaction,  external  reality  not  having  changed  in  the 
least,  unless  we  may  say  that  the  ticking  of  a  dis- 
tant clock  for  about  15,000  times  during  the  eight 
hours  I  was  asleep  was  something  that  would  be 
counted  by  me  even  in  sleep,  and  would  wake  me 
up  when  the  proper  number  had  been  ticked  off,  and 
that  some  variety  of  alarm  bell  was  rung  by  the  un- 
conscious to  arouse  me.  If  the  ticking  of  a  distant 
clock,  inaudible  even  to  attentive  consciousness,  or 
the  striking  of  the  hours  is  the  change  in  external 


y 


fK 


o 


110        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

reality  which  causes  me  to  wake  up,  this  requires 
us  to  suppose  that  the  unconscious  has  powers  not 
ordinarily  attributed  to  it. 

On  the  one  hand  it  must  be  supposed  to  be  able 
^^  to  perceive  intensities  which  are  too  low  for  con- 
sciousness to  perceive.  This  is,  however,  quite  con- 
ceivable when  we  consider  how  all  sensation  is  a 
form  of  consciousness  which  is  caused  by  'the  sum- 
mation of  impressions  which  are  severally  imper- 
ceptible. Thus  the  vibrations  of  the  air  or  the  ether 
which  separately  make  each  an  impression  upon 
some  part  of  the  end  organ  of  the  ear  or  the  eye 
are  not  perceptible  to  consciousness.  It  is  only  a 
fusion  of  these  separate  impressions  which  makes 
a  sensation  of  tone  or  of  colour. 

On  the  other  hand  we  shall  have  to  attribute  to 
the  unconscious  part  of  the  mind  an  ability  to  count 
the  hours  as  they  are  struck  in  the  other  room,  or  at 
least  an  ability  to  recognize  six  from  any  other 
number. 

Another  instance  of  the  power  of  the  unconscious 
to  do  what  consciousness  cannot  do  is  seen  in  the 
ability  of  ^a  person  to  understand  more  than  he  can 
express.  This  is  seen  in  the  comparative  ease  with 
which  one  can  learn  to  understand  what  is  said  in 
a  foreign  language,  even  though  one  cannot  speak 
it  as  well  as  one  can  understand  it.  It  is  quite 
the  opposite  in  learning  to  write  shorthand  and  to 
telegraph.  One  can  learn  much  more  easily  to  send 
messages  and  to  write  shorthand  than  one  can  learn 
to  read  what  is  written  or  to  take  down  the  tele- 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  UKGE      111 

graphic  message.  But  in  the  case  of  spoken  lan- 
guage, there  is  no  doubt  that  the  words  of  a  for- 
eigner are  more  easily  understood  than  replied  to, 
and  the  reason  lies  in  the  fact  that  much  of  what 
is  heard  is  not  clearly  or  completely  heard.  The 
unconscious  of  the  hearer  detects  what  is  inaudible 
to  him  consciously  and  supplies  the  meaning  by 
other  channels  than  sound.  In  the  native  pro- 
nunciation of  a  foreign  language  some  of  the  sounds 
which  are  made  are  in  colloquial  conversation  so 
slurred  over  as  almost  to  constitute  different  sounds 
and  the  total  effect  of  the  part  of  the  word  that  is 
audible  to  consciousness  is  quite  different  from  the 
full  words  as  they  are  expected  by  consciousness. 

There  is  the  further  consideration  that  a  great 
many  if  not  all  children  in  learning  to  talk  their 
mother  tongue  are  continually  talked  to  by  adults 
who  use  words  which  the  children  do  not  under- 
stand separately.  In  context  they  are  understood. 
This  may  indicate  that  understanding  consists  in 
the  ability  to  react  appropriately  with  actions,  not 
words.  In  this  case  the  words  as  words  need 
hardly  be  understood  at  all,  and  the  proper  use  of 
them  as  words  may  not  ever  be  learned.  But  from  i  ^ 
their  earliest  infancy  all  children  are  continually 
talked  to  as  if  they  understood  and  finally  they 
understand.  The  final  understanding  comes  some-  J^ 
times  in  a  flash  of  illumination  which  is  almost  a 
surprise  to  the  child.  It  can  be  only  that  there  is  a 
long  process  of  building  up  of  relations  between 
words  and  acts,  and  until  the  building  is  finished 


<3t' 


112        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

no  part  of  it  is,  so  to  speak,  visible  to  consciousness. 

The  becoming  conscious  of  a  relation  is  a  unique 
experience  associated  with  a  distinctly  pleasurable 
feeling.  There  is  this  source  of  pleasure  frequently 
to  those  who  have  the  occasion  to  study  the  history 
of  words  and  learn  the  relations  in  which  things 
were  held  by  other  people  in  bygone  times.  Fre- 
quently this  sudden  becoming  aware  of  a  similarity 
or  a  difference  is  quite  unaccountable  and  one  won- 
ders why  one  has  not  seen  the  relation  before. 
Such  a  sudden  emergence  came  to  my  mental  eyes 
recently  when  I  seemed  for  the  first  time  to  realize 
that  ^^  servant "  and  "  conservation  "  are  both  de- 
rivatives of  the  word  "  sei^ve "  which  meant  in 
Roman  times  to  watch  or  guard.  But  such  is  the 
present  character  of  servants  that  one  expects  very- 
little  conservation  in  their  actions. 

Occasionally  too  one  comes  upon  a  bit  of  poetry 
in  the  history  of  a  word  which  is  impossible  to 
read  without  knowing  the  word's  history.  Nuance 
is  the  same  word  with  but  a  metaphorical  change 
of  meaning  as  the  Latin  NuheSj,  a  cloud.  What 
richness  of  imagery  may  one  not  arouse  in  one's 
mind  by  the  memory  of  that  origin  for  that  word. 
And  sometimes  w^e  find  in  the  history  of  a  word  a 
humorous  touch  as  from  that  of  caterpillar  which 
is  our  present  burnished  pronunciation  of  cattus 
pillatus  or  "  hairy  cat." 

My  notion  is  that  a  great  many  of  such  relations 
are  under  favourable  conditions  as  readily  manifest 
to  consciousness  as  is  the  relation  between  "  serv- 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      113 

ant "  and  "  conservation/'  but  that  on  account  of 
the  opposition  such  as  is  felt  between  those  two 
ideas  of  servants  and  conservation  the  verbal  re- 
lation is  entirely  obscured  or  is  forced  into  the  un- 
conscious, where,  however,  it  is  none  the  less  clear. 
To  one  who  knows  the  meaning  of  presbyopia  (old 
man's  sight  defect)  the  original  meaning  of  pres- 
byterian  (pertaining  to  a  council  of  old  men)  is 
probably  quite  ready  in  the  unconscious,  and  needs 
only  some  illuminating  situation  to  bring  it  into 
consciousness.  Similarly  for  senior  and  senate. 
The  bond  between  joy,  jewellery,  and  gaud  is  not  so 
likely  to  emerge  on  account  of  the  difference  in  the 
spelling  and  pronunciation  of  the  words,  while  in 
non  compos  and  nincompoop  it  is  a  matter  of  in- 
dividual vocabulary. 

But  the  relations  between  things  are  always  evi- 
dent to  the  unconscious,  that  has  received  retinal 
photographs  of  them,  or  indeed  any  kind  of  sensory 
reports  of  them.  Of  certain  relations  of  things 
most  of  us  become  conscious  only  after  our  atten- 
tion is  called  to  them.  Observation  is  the  name  ap- 
plied to  a  trait  in  persons  into  whose  mind  such  re- 
lations either  come  naturally  or  have  been  intro- 
duced by  training.  Classical  examples  of  this  sun- 
burst of  consciousness  are  Archimedes'  "  Eureka," 
when  it  suddenly  occurred  to  him  in  his  historic 
bath  tub  that  specific  gravity  w^ould  test  the  gen- 
uineness of  King  Hero's  crown,  and  Newton's  real- 
ization that  the  moon  and  the  apple  were  both 
drawn  toward  the  earth  by  the  same  force. 


114        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

Every  one  can  give  illustrations  from  his  own 
experiences  how  certain  old  familiar  sights  have 
suddenly  "  struck  "  him  with  a  new  meaning.  The 
appropriateness  of  this  violent  word  is  quite  evi- 
dent. The  significance  of  certain  things  sometimes 
blazes  out  with  lightning  illumination  and  arouses 
the  emotion  which  goads  one  on  to  action.  The 
blindness  of  average  humanity  to  the  relation  of 
identity  is  illustrated  by  the  use  of  the  formula 
appended  to  many  notices :  "  This  means  you !  " 
The  blindness  of  them  that  have  eyes  and  yet  see 
not,  and  the  feeling  of  surprise  when  they  do  see  is 
illustrated  by  the  school  child  who  was  amazed  to 
learn  that  the  Mississippi  River  she  was  learning 
about  in  her  geography  lesson  was  the  same  Missis- 
sippi that  ran  past  her  back  door. 

§  6.  Current  Conscious  Psychology 

Picture  a  rope  100  feet  long  hanging  from  a  cross- 
beam over  a  well  more  than  100  feet  deep.  If  the 
visible  part  of  the  rope  is  pulled  sidewise  and  re- 
leased, it  will  fly  back  to  its  original  position  be- 
cause of  the  weight  of  the  95  feet  of  invisible  rope. 
Presently  the  visible  part  of  the  rope  will  be  seen 
to  vibrate,  although  untouched.  The  observer,  if 
ignorant  of  almost  every  principle  of  physics,  might 
very  well  be  "  amazed  "  at  the  rope  moving  itself 
again  and  again  with  gradually  decreasing  ampli- 
tude. He  could  not  see  the  part  of  the  rope  hang- 
ing in  the  well,  and  possibly  "  to  gain  some  private 
end  "  of  self-mystification,  might  refuse  to  think  of 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      115 

the  possibility  of  there  being  any  rope  below  the 
surface  of  the  ground.  We  might  tell  him  that  we 
know  it  is  there;  we  saw  it  before  it  was  lowered 
into  the  well ;  we  put  it  there  ourselves,  or  anything 
else;  but  he  would  not  believe  it.  So  persistently 
does  he  deny  it  that  we  begin  to  wonder  what  may 
be  the  private  end  he  may  be  wishing  to  gain,  which 
prevents  him  from  inferring  the  almost  obvious. 
Possibly  he  may  have  some  unpleasant  associations 
with  ropes'  ends  and  may  wish  to  believe  that  ropes 
have  not  any  unattached  ends!  So  persistently 
have  the  conscious  philosophers  denied  the  exist- 
ence of  the  unconscious,  because  it  is  immeasurable,  / 
invisible,  imperceptible  and  only  inferential. 

And  yet  Ktilpe  (page  446)  speaks  of  the  "co- 
operation of  unconscious  incentives  to  reproduc- 
tion''  as  nothing  unusual,  and  (450)  says:  "Em-  , 
pirical  psychology  has  no  occasion  to  endow  this  I 
unconscious  with  any  but  a  purely  physiological 
existence.  We  have  only  found  one  case  which 
seems  to  contradict  this  rule :  the  case  in  which  an 
unconscious  state  exerts  a  perceptible  influence  on 
consciousness.  But  here  we  really  have  a  conscious 
process,  whose  sole  difference  from  the  other  con- 
scious processes  of  the  time  is  its  impossibility  of 
separate  perception.  There  are  two  connections  in 
which  these  unconscious  components  are  especially 
important :  those  of  fusion  and  attention.  The  con- 
stituents of  the  conscious  field  of  regard  in  the  state 
of  attention  generally  form  an  unanalysed  total 
impression ;  though  any  alteration  or  disappearance 


116        MAN^S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

among  them  is  remarked  at  once.  The  ^  uncon- 
scious '  in  this  sense  is  therefore,  in  reality  some- 
thing conscious,  something  which  contributes  in 
noticeable  degree  to  the  psychical  process  of  the 
moment.  It  is  essentially  different  from  the  ^  un- 
conscious,' in  the  strict  meaning  of  the  term,  of 
which  we  can  only  say  that  it  may  possibly  serve  as 
an  incentive  to  the  reproduction  of  the  experience 
with  which  it  was  once  correlated.  In  the  process 
of  apperception  in  particular,  the  number  of  uncon- 
scious constituents  in  the  total  sum  of  incentives 
to  reproduction  may  be  very  considerable."  And 
on  page  452 :  "  The  connection  and  interpretation 
of  the  dream  consciousness  is  so  essentially  differ- 
ent from  those  of  the  ideas  of  the  waking  life. 
There  is  no  will  to  direct  and  regulate  the  train  of 
thought." 

Such  statements  as  these  give  us  a  clue  to  why 
the  experimental  conscious  psychologists  of  the  re- 
action time  variety  are  so  resolutely  unwilling  to 
consider  the  paramount  importance  of  the  uncon- 
scious. They  would  have  to  change  so  much  of 
their  systems,  would  have  to  unsay  so  much  of  them- 
selves as  to  amount  practically  to  self-annihilation. 
Their  ideas  in  large  numbers  would  have  to  be  con- 
signed to  the  scrap  heap,  and  scrap  heaps  are  not 
popular  except  with  more  progressive  communities. 
This  is  the  reason  why  psychoanalysis  is  not  taught 
in  most  colleges  and  universities.  It  is  too  new  and 
too  radical,  and  requires  too  much  readjustment  on 
the  part  of  both  teacher  and  student. 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  UKGE      117 

§  7.  The  Unconsoious  an  Hypothesis 
The  unconscious  is  of  course  not  a  state  of  mind 
of  which  we  can  become  directly  aware.  It  is,  on 
the  other  hand,  a  working  hypothesis,  a  supposi- 
tion necessary  to  explain  the  sequence  of  thoughts 
in  the  stream  of  consciousness ;  but,  as  a  hypothesis, 
it  has  worked  so  well  that  a  great  many  extraor- 
dinary thought  occurrences  in  normal  waking  life 
are  explained  by  it.  Also  the  bizarre  and  appar- 
ently disconnected  episodes  of  the  dream  of  the 
night  have  been  shown,  by  this  theory  of  the  un- 
conscious, to  have  a  psychological,  if  not  always  a 
formal  logical,  connection.  And  in  abnormal  psy- 
chology the  utterances  and  acts  of  those  suffering 
from  even  the  major  psychoses  are  better  under- 
stood by  means  of  this  theory,  which  posits  that  the 
ideas  which  occur  to  the  dementia  precox  patient 
occur  according  to  the  same  laws  that  govern  the 
most  logical  and  intellectual  productions  of  the 
highest  type  of  mental  development. 

Before  a  thought  enters-  consciousness  it  can 
hardly  be  termed  a  thought,  but  is  more  like  an  in- 
definite yearning  for  something,  a  sense  of  dis- 
satisfaction with  life  in  general,  or  if,  for  a  consid- 
erable time,  it  fails  to  achieve  expression  as  thought 
or  act,  it  is  in  consciousness  only  as  a  mild  anxiety 
or  mental  restlessness.  It  is  like  a  shapeless  cloud 
on  the  horizon  on  an  otherwise  clear  day,  or  like  a 
filmy  veil  of  cloud  which  sometimes  in  September 
afternoons  comes  before  the  sun,  and  we  suddenly 


118        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIEIT 

realize  that  the  sun  is  not  as  bright  as  we  thought 
it  was.  On  looking  up  we  see  the  thin  "  mackerel 
sky  "  cloud  effect. 

By  inference  from  our  own  experience  and  from 
that  of  a  number  of  other  observers,  which  is  be- 
coming larger  every  year,  we  can  see  the  work  of 
the  unconscious  in  some  people  clouding  their 
mental  sky,  in  others  shining  like  the  noonday 
sun.  But  while  the  theory  of  the  unconscious  is 
only  an  inference  from  consciously  observable  facts, 
it  is  an  inference  of  so  highly  logical  a  character 
that  no  one  has  successfully  assailed  it  or  shown 
that  it  is  in  any  way  fallacious. 

§  8.  An  Illustration 

To  give  a  concrete  illustration  of  the  deduction 
of  the  unconscious  activity  from  conscious  acts  or 
words,  I  will  cite  the  following  case  communicated 
to  me  by  a  lady.  She  was  marketing  and  bought 
some  damsons  at  the  fruit  store  —  a  basket  for  sev- 
enty-five cents  and  other  fruits  amounting  to  a  dol- 
lar and  a  half.  She  paid  for  them  and  left  the 
store.  After  walking  for  a  block  or  two  she  was 
seized  with  the  idea  that  she  had  been  overcharged 
twenty-five  cents  by  the  dealer  for  the  damsons. 
Forgetting  that  they  had  been  priced  seventy-five 
cents,  and  now  thinking  that  they  were  fifty  cents, 
she  wrote  out  the  items  on  a  piece  of  paper,  took  it 
back  to  the  dealer  and  showed  him  the  sum  total, 
now  a  dollar  and  a  quarter. 

Her  manner  of  telling  her  story  was  so  convinc- 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      119 

ing  that  he  looked  probably  only  at  the  sum,  took 
her  word  for  it,  and  gave  her  back  the  quarter 
that  she  said  was  due  her.  The  reason  why  she 
promptly  forgot  the  real  price  of  the  damsons,  sev- 
enty-five cents,  will  appear  from  what  she  next  did. 
She  went  to  another  store  and  spent  all  the  money 
she  had  in  her  purse  for  some  other  articles.  If  she 
had  not  had  the  extra  quarter  she  took  in  from  the 
fruit  dealer,  she  would  not  have  had  enough  to  pay 
for  the  most  important  purchase  of  her  marketing, 
something  she  very  much  wanted  to  have  for  lunch. 
After  she  went  home,  it  suddenly  flashed  upon  her 
•that  seventy-five  cents  was  the  right  price  for  the 
damsons  after  all,  and  she  was  quite  chagrined  that 
she  had  unconsciously  cheated  the  fruit  dealer. 

This  one  incident  would  not  reveal  the  uncon- 
scious motives  underlying  the  forgetting  of  the  real 
price  of  the  fruit,  but  when  thousands  of  other 
slips  of  memory  have  been  examined  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  theory  of  the  unconscious,  it  is 
quite  evident  that  the  lady's  unconscious  controlled 
the  situation  to  the  extent  of  making  her  forget 
the  price.  It  also  caused  her  to  believe  (because 
she  unconsciously  wished)  that  the  damsons  were 
fifty  cents  a  basket,  and  it  drove  her  to  shave  off 
the  price  off  these,  which  she  was  going  to  turn  into 
jam  at  considerable  labour,  and  add  it  to  the  amount 
which  without  it  would  not  have  been  sufficient  to 
buy  something  else  that  she  wanted  very  much. 

It  is  quite  as  if  her  unconscious  had  spoken  to 
her  in  so  many  words,  saying :  "  It  would  be  nice, 


120         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SFTRIT 

if  these  damsons  were  only  fifty  cents;  so  let  us 
make  believe  they  are,  and  persuade  the  dealer  that 
he  has  overcharged  us."  This  incident  is  the  more 
remarkable  because  the  lady  was  not  consciously 
aware  that  she  had  not  enough  money  in  her  purse 
to  pay  for  what  she  w^anted  to  buy  at  the  second 
store.  She  was  seized  with  the  idea  solely  of  the 
overcharge,  while  walking  from  the  first  store  to  the 
second,  thus  unconsciously  cheating  the  first  man  in 
order  to  pay  the  second,  without  knowing  either 
that  she  was  cheating  him  or  why  she  was.  The 
reason  must  be  quite  evident  to  the  reader  by  this 
time,  but  it  occurred  to  the  lady  only  after  she  had 
arrived  home. 

The  dominating  wish  in  this  episode  was  of  the 
self-aggrandizement  character  and  belonged  to  the 
enlargement  of  the  objective  self,  which  is  seen  in 
the  tendency  to  acquire  real  things,  and  it  caused 
a  sudden  oblivion  of  one  very  clearly  conscious  fact, 
and  the  emergence  into  consciousness  of  an  utterly 
erroneous  idea,  with,  however,  such  vividness  and 
force  that  it  made  her  stop,  and  prepare  a  written 
document,  which  was  probably  the  most  convinc- 
ing argument  she  could  have  used  on  the  very  pre- 
occupied fruit  dealer.  It  made  her  retrace  her 
steps,  carry  out  the  really  ridiculous  farce  with  the 
man,  and  enabled  her  to  go  home  triumphantly 
with  what  she  actually  wanted  more  than  she  did 
the  damsons.  It  made  her  write  on  her  paper 
"  Damsons  .50  "  and  read  it  to  herself  as  "  Dam- 
sons seventy-five  cents,"  just  as  it  makes  other  peo- 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      121 

pie  see  what  is  not  there  and  not  see  what  is  there, 
errors  that  are  constantly  being  made  by  every  one 
all  the  time.  Errare  est  liumanum,  but  one  never 
errs  against  the  interests  of  the  unconscious.  ^i-Cj, 

As  a  reply  to  those  who  may  say  that  sometimes 
mistakes  are  injurious  or  even  fatal  to  the  one  who 
makes  them,  I  would  cite  the  statements  of  those 
physicians  who  have  examined  the  mental  condi- 
tions of  people  who  fall  and  hurt  themselves,  or 
who  make  faulty  actions  of  almost  any  kind.  In 
almost  all  the  cases  of  those  misfortunes  analysis 
has  shown  that  there  was  an  unconscious  wish  grat- 
ified in  the  end,  not  necessarily  a  wish  to  fall  and 
be  injured,  but  an  unconscious  wish  to  receive  at 
least  some  of  the  favours  and  attentions  claimed  by 
and  bestowed  upon  the  unfortunate. 


§  9.  Accidents 

In  a  sense  then  there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  acci- 
dent. Had  the  unconscious  wish  of  all  the  persons 
concerned  in  the  inspection  of  equipment,  the  actual 
running  and  observance  of  signals  in  the  case  of  the 
train  that  breaks  a  wheel  or  a  rail,  or  runs  past  a 
signal  and  collides  with  another  train  standing  on 
the  same  track  —  had  the  unconscious  wishes  of  all 
these  persons  been  upon  the  same  goal,  the  precau- 
tions against  disaster  would  have  been  so  numerous 
as  to  make  disaster  impossible.  If  the  elevator 
which  dropped  fifteen  stories  and  killed  some  and 
injured  many  others  had  been  inspected  the  day 
before  by  a  man  whose  unconscious  wishes  were  all 


y 


/ 


122         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

centred  upon  the  safe  transportation  of  passengers 
in  elevators,  the  cable  would  not  have  snapped, 
because  his  unconscious  wish  would  have  made  him 
examine  it  with  the  greatest  care.  And  again  if 
elevator  accidents  were  much  more  common  than 
they  are,  the  unconscious  wishes  of  a  large  number 
of  people  would  put  it  into  their  heads  to  take 
concerted  action  in  the  matter  and  secure  better 
inspection  or  heavier  cables  or  more  efficient  safety 
stops. 

There  is  no  doubt  of  the  fact  that  many  accidents 
attributed  to  carelessness  are  the  result  of  the  un- 
conscious wishes  of  one  or  more  people  that  the 
accident  would  happen.  Carelessness  is  but  the 
absence  of  the  conscious  wish.  Care  means  the 
presence  of  the  wish  or  desire. 

There  is  also  no  doubt  of  the  fact  that  to  wish 
for  a  thing  with  all  one's  heart  implies  the  con- 
currence of  both  conscious  and  unconscious  wishes. 
To  wish  for  success  with  one's  entire  subjective  and 
objective  ego  is  to  wish  for  it  consciously  and  un- 
consciously at  the  same  time.  The  conscious  wish 
may  be  for  the  ownership  of  a  house  in  the  country. 
If  a  man  says  to  himself :  "  I  wish  I  had  a  place  in 
the  country !  "  and  does  not  express  himself  further 
in  word  or  act,  we  may  be  quite  sure  that  uncon- 
sciously (that  is,  with  the  greater  part  of  his  per- 
sonality), he  does  not  want  a  home  in  the  country. 
In  fact  the  conscious  verbal  expression  of  this  wish 
is  many  times,  though  not  always,  a  direct  indica- 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  UKGE      123 

tion  of  tlie  man's  unconscious  desire  not  to  be  both- 
ered with  suburban  or  rural  ownership.  For,  if  he 
really  did  want  it,  ideas  would  continually  occur 
to  him  showing  him  how  he  could  take  steps  to  get 
his  house.  The  very  fact  that  in  reading  his  morn- 
ing newspaper  his  eye  lights  on  an  advertisement 
of  such  a  house  as  he  would  like  to  own,  and  in  an- 
other column  happens  to  notice  that  some  stock  he 
owns  has  gone  up  a  few  points, —  the  mere  fact  that 
a  casual  perusal  of  a  newspaper  brings  out  these 
two  points  shows  at  once  that  in  two  instants  of  his 
conscious  thinking  he  has  been  almost  completely 
controlled  by  his  unconscious  wish  for  a  house  in 
the  country.  It  shows  that  there  are  at  least  two 
sections  of  his  unconscious  mind  that  are  ready  to 
steer  into  the  focus  of  attention  whatever  factors 
they  can  toward  the  purchase. 

§  10.  Another  Illustration 

A  professional  man  of  an  improvident  nature 
moved  from  a  flat  in  a  large  city  to  furnished  rooms 
in  a  suburb,  where  he  proposed  to  live  for  an  in- 
definite time,  meanwhile  keeping  his  eye  open  for 
a  good  chance  to  rent  a  house,  where  his  wife  and 
child  of  three  could  have  more  wholesome  surround- 
ings. The  unconscious  wish  to  buy  was  very  slight, 
though  he  told  his  friends  that  he  was  going  to 
have  Si  house  in  the  country.  Consciously  he 
thought  he  wanted  only  to  rent,  as  he  had  been  un- 
fortunate in  previous  real  estate  holdings  in  the 


124        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

same  suburb,  and  at  this  time  he  was  not  only 
without  funds  but  was  actually  considerably  in 
debt. 

But  he  found  when  looking  about  the  town  that 
rents  were  exorbitant  for  undesirable  places  and 
that  really  very  few  houses  were  for  rent,  while 
almost  every  third  house  in  town  was  for  sale  at 
an  extremely  high  price.  His  furnished  rooms  on 
the  other  hand  cost  him  more  than  he  had  paid 
for  his  flat  in  the  city.  His  wife  very  much  dis- 
liked the  rooms  and  the  people  from  whom  he 
rented  them. 

Consciously,  therefore,  his  situation  was  such  as 
to  make  him  see  the  desirability  of  owning  a  house, 
but  he  could  not  seem  to  get  any  ideas  as  to  how 
to  proceed  about  financing  it.  Now  the  born  finan- 
cier can  interest  the  capital  of  other  men  and  can 
amass  a  fortune  out  of  nothing.  Ideas  of  manipu- 
lations come  to  his  mind  in  large  numbers  unbid- 
den and  nothing  escapes  him.  He  does  not  think 
out  his  schemes  consciously  only,  but  they  come  into 
his  head  fully  formed  and  the  means  of  carrying 
them  out  have  been  observed  by  him  perhaps  years 
before,  and  the  memories  stored  in  his  mind  ready 
for  the  suitable  occasion. 

Not  so,  however,  with  the  improvident  profes- 
sional man  in  question.  He  was  deeply  absorbed 
in  collecting  words  for  a  special  dictionary  of  trade 
terms.  It  did  not  occur  to  him  to  examine  the  real 
estate  market  thoroughly.  It  did  occur  to  him  to 
add  to  his  collection  of  terms.     His  wife  on  the 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  UKGE      125 

other  hand  studied  the  advertisements  in  the  local 
paper  and  upbraided  him  constantly  for  his  lack 
of  enthusiasm  on  the  house  idea.     Her  persistence 
drove  him  to  a  local  bank  president  for  advice  as 
to  how  to  raise  funds.     This  man  told  him  he  ought 
to  wait  two  or  three  years  before  buying  a  house 
as  the  market  was  at  top  prices  and 'in  that  time 
there  would  be  a  decline.     This  he  took  for  gospel 
truth.     He  would  not  have  accepted  it,  if  it  had  not  \ 
coincided  with  his  unconscious  wish,  which  was  / 
predominantly  against  ownership.     What  occurred 
to  his  mind  about  owning  a  house  was  the  thought 
not  only  of  having  to  run  his  own  furnace,  which 
he  would  have  to  do  in  a  rented  place,  but  also  of 
taking  care  of  the  outside  of  the  house,  painting 
it,  replacing  gutters  and  leaders,  mowing  the  lawn, 
etc.,  all  of  which  made  the  ownership  idea  unaccept- 
able to  a  physically  lazy  man.     In  reality  he  did  not      I 
care  except  superficially  and  verbally  about  his    j 
wife's  discomforts  in  the  furnished  rooms.     He  was 
not  in  them  over  much.     Unconsciously  then  the 
situation  was  very  unpropitious  for  his  taking  any 
very  efficient  measures  for  getting  a  house.     Stung 
by  his  wife's  continued  railing  he  went  and  inter- 
viewed some  rich  friends  and  acquaintances,  un- 
consciously picking  out  those  who,  as  he  should 
have  known,  were  most  unlikely  to  help  him. 

Besides  the  high  cost  of  renting  and  the  fewness 
of  the  houses  to  be  rented,  to  which  I  have  referred, 
another  factor  entered  into  the  situation.  On 
walking  through  a  pleasant  street  on  the  outskirts 


126        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

of  the  suburb  he  and  his  wife  came  to  a  new,  still 
unoccupied  but  very  small  and  perfectly  equipped 
house.  By  the  merest  chance  the  door  happened 
to  be  unlocked  and  they  walked  in  and  saw  it  with 
the  greatest  interest.  It  had  every  modern  con- 
venience and  was  in  all  respects  a  most  desirable 
dwelling.  His  wife  mentally  placed  their  furni- 
ture, then  in  storage,  in  the  places  which  the  pieces 
would  occupy  if  they  owned  the  house.  The  wife 
said :  "  This  would  be  our  room,  and  this  would  be 
Theresa's  and  this  little  one  I  could  have  for  my 
sewing  room."  To  which  he  replied :  "  Yes,  my 
dear,  how  nice.''  His  own  unconscious  wishes  were 
not  even  then  much  enlisted,  for  when  they  re- 
turned that  afternoon  to  their  furnished  rooms,  he 
said :  "  That  house  is  too  small,  too  far  from  the 
centre  of  the  town,  too  lonely,  you  would  never 
be  content  there  yourself.  You  would  be  afraid  to 
stay  there  with  Theresa  all  night  alone.  Besides 
I  could  not  buy  it.  The  man  wants  too  much 
equity." 

Thus  things  went  along  for  a  month  until  sum- 
mer time.  The  first  of  July  came.  The  husband 
picked  out  a  few  more  impossible  acquaintances  and 
told  them  his  plan,  how  he  would  borrow  the  money 
from  them  and  pay  them  back  so  much  every  year, 
give  them  7  per  cent,  on  their  money  and  the  deed 
to  the  house  until  he  had  paid  back  what  he  bor- 
rowed. He  went  to  the  wrong  people,  even  to  a 
couple  of  real  estate  agents  who  admitted  that  they 
had  once  done  that  sort  of  thing  but  frankly  said 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      127 

that  now  that  they  had  made  so  much  money  they 
did  not  have  to  take  this  means  of  increasing  their 
sales.  Manifestly  his  unconscious  was  not  yet 
wishing  to  own  a  house.     ' 

The  unconscious  situation,  however,  unex- 
pectedly changed.  It  occurred  to  him  that  he  did 
not  himself  like  the  furnished  rooms.  They  were 
dark,  north  rooms.  He  planned  to  go  away  for  the 
summer  and  he  suddenly  realized  that  he  would 
have  no  chance  while  away,  to  do  anything  at  all 
about  a  home,  that  he  would  at  the  end  of  the  sum- 
mer return  to  his  professional  work  without  either 
a  city  flat  or  a  suburban  house  and  be  literally 
homeless.  He  recalled  vividly  the  difficulty  he  had 
had  in  finding  even  these  undesirable  rooms,  and  — 
then  he  went  one  day  to  an  old  school  friend  of  his 
whom  he  had  not  seen  in  25  years,  laid  before  this 
man  his  scheme  of  repayment  in  instalments.  His 
friend  said :  "  Surely,  old  man,  any  time  you  wish, 
any  amount  you  want,  and  I  don't  have  to  sell  any 
securities  to  get  the  cash  ready  either.''  Thus  did 
the  improvident  professional  man's  unconscious  ex- 
ecute a  right-about  face,  and  immediately  suggest 
the  names  of  several  old  friends,  the  first  one  of 
whom  most  gladly  and  graciously  acceded  to  the 
proposition  which  he  had  presented  in  the  same 
way  to  a  dozen  other  persons. 

The  proverb  "  Where  there's  a  will  there's  a 
way "  is  cryptic.  To  be  translated  into  modern 
analytical  psychological  terms  it  should  read :  "  If 
the  unconscious  wish  is  directed  to  a  certain  object, 


128        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

a  multitude  of  ideas  about  means  of  acquiring  that 
object  will  spontaneously  present  themselves  to 
consciousness."  But  I  will  admit  that  the  brief 
and  alliterative  original  is  easier  to  remember  than 
the  translation  into  psychological  language. 

The  improvident  professional  man  of  this  story 
woke  up  with  extraordinary  suddenness  to  the 
actual  situation  that  was  encompassing  him.  Ab- 
sorbed in  his  dictionary  dream,  he  did  not  realize, 
until  almost  the  day  of  leaving  the  suburb  for  his 
summer  vacation,  that  he  would  be  in  a  very  em- 
barrassing position  when  he  returned  in  the  fall. 
His  realization  of  his  situation,  however,  was  ac- 
companied by  the  unconscious  mental  activity  be- 
coming centred  about  the  one  idea  of  owning  the 
little  house  in  which  his  wife  had  imagined  their 
chairs  and  tables  as  standing,  and  he  went  straight 
to  the  right  man,  borrowed  the  necessary  money 
and  bought  that  house  with  it.  Since  that  time  he 
has  realized  too  that  it  has  been  for  him  a  money 
saving  scheme,  for  at  the  end  of  a  few  years  he  not 
only  paid  back  his  friend  but  had  become  thrifty 
himself  instead  of  improvident. 

But  there  was  an  unconscious  reason  why  this 
man  was  improvident.  Consciously  he  would  have 
told  any  one  that  of  course  he  wanted  to  have  money 
and  prosper  in  a  financial  way.  Who  wouldn't? 
But  unconsciously  he  was  not  desirous  of  having 
money  for  he  was  unhappily  married.  He  did  not 
really  want  his  wife  to  have  luxuries-,  and  he  knew 
that  if  he  had  money  she  would  demand  and  he 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  UKGE      129 

would   have   to   give   her   whatever   luxuries   she 
wanted.     He  was  not  one  of  those  men  who  go 
ahead  and  make  money  and  never  let  their  wives 
know  how  much  they  earn  or  gain  in  speculation. 
So  that  although  he  inherited  some,  it  was  soon 
dissipated,  after  which  they  lived  a  hand  to  mouth 
existence,    the    man    always    protesting    that    he 
couldn't  earn  enough,  which  meant  he  didn't  want 
to,  the  wife  always  telling  him  he  was  a  brilliant 
man  and  could  earn  all  he  wanted  if  he  only  would. 
They  were  both  right.     He  could  not  because  he 
did  not  unconsciously  wish  to.     He  could  earn  all 
he  wanted,  because  he  did  earn  all  he  unconsciously 
wanted,  and  got  most  of  his  satisfactions  from  the 
notably  efficient  and  economical  way  his  wife  man- 
aged the  home,  bought  an  automobile  on  the  in- 
stalment plan  and  in  a  truly  marvellous  way  made 
a  really  small  amount  of  money  perform  almost  a 
miracle  in  providing  creature  comforts  and  even 
luxuries. 

These  two  illustrations  of  the  lady  and  the  dam- 
sons u«d  the  improvident  professional  man  clearly 
show  the  objective  facts  from  which  are  deduced 
the  unconscious  wishes  in  both  personalities,  but 
of  course  in  a  very  small  section  of  the  personal- 
ities.    There  is  no  doubt  at  all  that  the  unconscious  \ 
wishes  of  every  person  are  the  only  explanation  of     ! 
the  otherwise  inexplicable  in  human  conduct.     We    / 
all  do  things  every  day  which  are  from  the  con-   '' 
scions  point  of  view  irrational.     Judged  by  really 
conscious  logical  standards  these  acts  are  irritat- 


130        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

ing  in  their  lack  of  consecutiveness  and  rational 
purpose.  We  see  them  in  the  whims  of  childhood, 
the  caprices  of  youth,  the  prejudices  of  middle  age 
and  the  crotchets  of  senility. 

§  11.  Magnification 

The  magnification  of  his  subjective  ego  if  carried 
to  its  limit  makes  the  individual  believe  he  is,  or  is 
on  a  par  with,  divinity.  To  be  omnipercipient  is 
almost  if  not  quite  equivalent  to  being  omniscient 
and  omnipotent.  If  I  could,  I  would  look  in  a 
crystal  in  my  home  in  New  York  and  see  some  rob- 
bery being  committed,  in  any  place  whatever,  say 
Chicago.  With  my  hyperesthetic  vision  I  would 
follow  the  robber  and  note  what  he  did  with  his 
loot,  and  then  where  he  betook  himself.  I  would 
arrange  by  telephone  for  his  immediate  apprehen- 
sion and  the  recovery  of  the  stolen  property.  I 
would  receive  the  reward  offered  for  both,  and  the 
next  night  I  would  do  the  same  thing.  I  could 
easily  make  from  one  to  five  thousand  dollars  a  day 
doing  that.  I  would  be  consulted  by  all  the  great 
detectives  and  secret  service  men.  I  would  buy  a 
larger  and  more  perfect  crystal  if  that  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  it.  I  would  continue,  year  after 
year,  until  either  robbery  would  be  manifestly 
absurd,  because  every  act  would  be  instantly  de- 
tected by  my  all-seeing  eye,  or  my  methods  and 
success  would  be  duplicated  by  any  other  person  or 
persons  interested  in  thus  subjectively  magnifying 
their  own  ego,  when  there  would  be  so  many  men 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      131 

and  women  capable  of  doing  the*  same  thing  that 
even  the  thought  of  attempting  any  crime  what- 
ever would  at  once  appear  ridiculous,  and  crime 
would  vanish  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  With 
enough  people  able  thus,  through  crystals,  to  see 
what  any  one  they  wished  to  spy  on  was  doing, 
there  would  soon  be  few  people  who  would  harbour 
any  dishonest  thoughts  at  all  for  fear  of  being 
branded  as  potential  criminals  and  universally  boy- 
cotted. Furthermore  the  world  would  consist  of 
demigod  crystal  gazers  and  the  rest  of  the  people 
who  would  live  in  fear  if  not  reverence  of  these. 
Who  would  not  belong  to  the  demigod  class?  But 
if  crystal  g^ing  and  telepathy  were  scientific  facts 
and  not  merely  beliefs  inspired  by  unconscious 
wishes  for  subjective  ego  magnification,  almost  any 
one  having  an  introspective,  or  introversional  dis- 
position would  be  able  to  magnify  his  vision  to  the 
point  of  clairvoyance,  and  do  what  I  have  said 
above  that  I  would  do. 

If  I  could,  I  would  lie  on  my  sofa  in  my  den  in 
my  house  in  New  York  City,  would  have  my  stenog- 
rapher take  down  the  ramblings  of  my  mind,  and 
if  these  could  be  attuned  to  the  telepathic  waves 
emanating  from  some  passion-shaken  wretch  I 
would  see  him  in  my  vision  as  he  started  from  some 
suburban  barn  with  a  horse  and  red  wagon  loaded 
with  dynamite  and  window  weights  sawed  into 
slugs  by  the  oxyacetylene  torch.  I  would,  as  I  lay 
in  a  trance,  utter  these  things  into  words.  My 
secretary,  also  present  while  my  stenographer  was 


132         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

recording  my  utterances,  would  at  once  call  up  the 
police,  have  the  wagon  driven  into  the  middle  of  a 
large  vacant  space,  or  the  machinery  of  the  time 
clock  stopped  and  thirty  lives  and  four  hundred 
injuries  in  Wall  Street  would  be  saved.  I  would 
let  my  mind  ramble  on  in  my  trance  state  in  the 
presence  of  my  stenographer  and  my  secretary  and 
avert  calamity  after  calamity.  I  would  detect 
every  "  red  "  thought  in  the  minds  of  every  Bol- 
shevist and  Anarchist  on  the  eve  of  every  one  of 
their  senseless  perpetrations;  or  I  would  start  a 
glass  and  explosion  insurance  company  of  my  own 
and  become  a  millionaire  in  a  few  weeks. 

If  I  could,  I  would  lie  reposefully  in  the  evening 
quiet  of  my  darkened  study,  in  the  house  in  New 
York,  and  get  telepathic  communications  from  all 
who  were  taking  unjust  and  unreasonable  profits 
from  the  storage  and  sale  of  commodities.  I  would, 
if  I  could  be  that  sort  of  medium,  entrance  myself 
every  night  and  my  secretary  would  the  next  morn- 
ing publish  a  list  of  all  the  persons  who  were  ex- 
torting money  by  taking  advantage  of  the  ignorance 
and  lack  of  self-control  of  their  fellows. 

If  I  could  have  done  so,  I  would  have  averted  the 
Titanic  disaster,  given  warning  of  earthquakes  and 
volcanic  eruptions  and  saved  innumerable  lives.  I 
would  have  averted  the  world  war.  I  would  have 
enlisted  the  activities  of  mankind  in  much  needed 
constructive  work,  both  moral  and  material.  If  I 
could  have  done  these  things,  there  are  thousands 
of  other  men  and  women  with  just  as  good  feelings 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      133 

for  humanity  who  could  have  done  them  as  well  as 
I.  Therefore  they  could  not  have  been  done,  or 
they  would  have  been  done. 

Except,  that  were  I  as  omniscient  as  all  that,  I 
should  probably  have  let  the  whole  thing  go  on  as  it 
did,  earthquakes,  eruptions  both  volcanic  and  social 
and  everything  else. 

Furthermore,  if  I  could,  I  would  communicate 
with  the  spirits  of  the  departed,  particularly  with 
my  two  best  college  friends,  H.M.H.  and  G.N.O., 
who  have  departed  before  me  and  I  would  have  con- 
tinued our  discourses  on  God,  Freedom  and  Im- 
mortality. I  would  have  done  it  frequently.  I 
would  have  sent  my  whole  family  to  the  movies  for 
at  least  one  evening  every  week  in  order  to  learn 
from  my  two  absent  friends,  who  told  me  everything 
in  their  lives,  without  the  least  reserve,  just  how 
they  were  passing  the  time  now  and  what  they  were 
thinking  about;  for  their  thoughts  were  more  in- 
teresting to  me  than  those  of  any  people  I  have 
ever  met  since.  If  I  could  do  this,  so  could  others ; 
and  no  movies  or  any  other  form  of  public  enter- 
tainment would  be  necessary  or  possible,  for  the 
tales  they  would  tell  would  surpass  in  interest  any- 
thing that  one  could  pay  money  to  see. 

If  I  could  do  this  thing  and  it  were  a  scientific 
fact,  like  telegraphy  and  telephony  and  gramophony 
or  any  other  thing,  anybody  could  do  it.  When 
radium  was  made  by  Curie,  his  description  of  his 
process  enabled  any  other  chemist  having  the  same 
materials  to  make  the  same  product.     When  Jenner 


134        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

told  others  how  to  vaccinate,  any  physician  could 
do  the  same.  When  serum  therapy  was  discovered, 
every  physician  was  in  a  position  to  use  it.  When 
telepathy  is  scientifically  proved,  all  I  have  said 
that  I  would  do,  if  I  could,  will  be  possible  for  me 
and  for  any  other  psychologist  as  soon  as  he  reads 
the  description  of  the  proper  method.  It  has  not 
vyet  been  scientifically  discovered.  I  infer  that  lack 
because  of  the  fact  that  the  method  has  not  been 
described.  This  is  not  saying  that  it  will  not  be 
discovered  some  day.  I  am  not  attempting  a  nega- 
tive proof,  which  is  a  very  unwise  thing  to  do.  I 
am  merely  stating  what  would  have  to  be  possible 
before  telepathy  would  rightly  be  regarded  as  sci- 
entifically established. 

§  12.  Limit  on  Size 

However,  there  is  no  manner  of  doubt  that  the 
idea  of  telepathy  is  very  firmly  established,  but  that 
is  quite  another  thing.  It  not  only  is  established 
but  it  always  has  been  established  in  the  human 
mind  simply  as  a  result  of  the  above-stated  prin- 
ciple of  the  universal  unconscious  desire  for  the 
magnification  of  the  individual  subjective  ego.  In 
the  preceding  paragraphs  I  have  shown  the  way  in 
which  the  ego  would  be  magnified,  first  the  sub- 
jective, by  extension  of  ability  to  perceive,  and  then 
the  objective  ego  by  the  amassing  of  material 
wealth. 

It  is  evident  that  if  the  unconscious  could  have 
its  crassest  vegetative  wish  fulfilled,  it  would  be  by 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      135 

simple  growing  of  the  individual  body.     We  can  but 
suppose  that,  if  the  impulse  which  drives  on  the  tis- 
sues of  the  animal  body  could  be  called  a  wish,  that 
the  wish  of  any  particular  organ  would  be  for  mere 
proliferation  of  cells  in  such  a  way  that  the  tissue 
of  the  organ  would  grow  so  large  as  to  weigh  down 
the  rest  of  the  body  with  its  increased  ponderosity, 
and  that  it  is  only  the  impossibility  thus  created 
of  the  rest  of  the  body  moving  it  and  contributing  to 
its  development  which  operates  as  a  check.     As  we 
are  all  of  us,  animals  and  humans  alike,  organisms 
that  require  a  subjection  of  each  part  to  every  other 
part  of  the  individual,  the  mere  proliferation  of 
cells  in  any  one  part,  and  its  consequent  dispro- 
portionate growth  would  destroy  the  balance  of  the 
whole,  and  render  it  incapable  in  the  struggle  for 
existence.     But  we  must  suppose  that  the  uncon- 
scious wish  for  physical  enlargement  of  any  part 
of  the  animal  body  must  inhere  in  that  part  or  in 
its   component   elements;    and   we   can   therefore 
easily  see  that  the  unconscious  wish  for  merely 
vegetative  growth  is  one  of  the  most  fundamental 
of  unconscious  wishes,  upspringing  eternal  in  the 
animal  system,  and,  as  is  always  the  case,  forced 
to  take  a  substitute  aggrandizement  for  the  original 
merely  material  one. 

Thus  the  enlargement  of  the  objective  ego  is  a 
substitute  for  that  of  the  subjective.  The  amass- 
ing of  material  wealth,  which  is  symbolic  power,  is 
a  substitute  for  the  generally  unattainable  physical 
predominance,    attaining    which   the    unconscious 


136        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

would  cease  to  issue  to  the  vegetative  life  any  im- 
pulses to  grow  in  actual  size.  But  the  average  hu- 
man is  not  of  dominating  corporeal  size  and  in  or- 
der to  satisfy  vicariously  the  unconscious  wish  to 
be  so,  he  has  to  gather  around  him  things  that  can 
be  called  by  his  name. 

§  13.  Fission  and  Fusion 

The  significant  difference  between  animal  and 
higher  vegetable  life  on  the  one  hand  and  all  lower 
forms  of  life  on  the  other  is  the  difference  between 
reproduction  by  fission  ^  and  reproduction  by  fu- 
sion. In  the  truly  sexual  reproduction,  a  new  in- 
dividual is  initiated  by  the  fusion  of  two  cells, 
while  his  growth  and  development  is  carried  on 
solely  by  fission.  The  two  original  cells  by  their 
union  form  one  cell  which  is  the  beginning  of  him 
as  an  individual,  a  single  celled  organism  like  other 
single  celled  organisms  with,  however,  the  essential 
difference  that  this  one,  formed  by  the  fusion  of 
two,  does  not  split  into  two  cells  homogeneous  in 
all  their  qualities  but  into  two  which  differ  in  that 
they  subsequently  develop  into  two  different  parts 
of  a  whole.  In  the  true  fission  reproduction  any 
cell  splits  into  two  cells  which  are  homogeneous  in 
all  qualities  and  these  into  four  similar  ones,  these 
into  eight  and  so  on.  Now  when  the  individual 
that  is  the  result  of  fusion  of  two  cells,  has  split 
into  two,  four,  eight,  16,  32,  64,  128,  256,  1024, 
2048,  etc.,  cells,  all  these  cells  appear  to  have  dif- 

1  Boiryokinesis. 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      137 

ferent  potentialities  for  producing  different  parts 
of  the  organism  constituting  the  individual  until 
at  any  rate  the  several  parts  reach  their  maximum 
of  growth. 

What  it  is  that  prevents  this  maximum  from 
being  much  larger  than  it  actually  is,  is  not  clear, 
but  there  would  have  to  be  an  end  to  it  for  the  fol- 
lowing reason.  The  individuals  composing  any 
species  can  not  reproduce  other  individuals  except 
by  means  of  the  fusion  of  the  male  cell  and  the 
female  cell,  the  zoosperm  and  the  ovum.  In  order 
to  attain  the  greatest  possible  cross  fertilization, 
the  males  and  females  must  be  of  a  more  or  less 
average  size  (or  an  inordinately  large  male  would 
not  fertilize  but  kill  a  small  female,  and  a  small 
male  could  not  fertilize  an  inordinately  large  fe- 
male). But  if  it  happened  that  a  male  and  female 
went  on  growing  to  such  size  that  they  were  ten 
times  the  size  of  the  average  and  they  met  and 
reproduced  their  kind,  the  huge  children  of  that 
union  would  have  no  others  except  their  own  broth- 
ers and  sisters  with  which  to  mate,  and  would  there- 
fore suffer  the  fate  of  extreme  inbreeding  which  is 
eventual  extinction. 

So  we  may  say  that  it  is  the  necessity  of  fusional 
reproduction  that  puts  an  end  to  individual  cor- 
poreal aggrandizement.  The  proliferation  of  cells 
by  fission  is  stopped  for  the  sole  purpose  of  per- 
mitting reproduction  by  fusion.  The  male  and  fe- 
male cells  in  the  animal  body  thus  have  a  power  of 
veto  over  the  continuous  enlargement  of  the  groups 


138         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

of  other  cells.  How  this  is  effected  is  not  known. 
We  can  only  see  that  it  must  be  so.  Then,  when 
the  growth  of  the  individual  male  and  female  has 
reached  a  point  which  might  be  called  the  specific 
point,  the  growth  in  mere  size  automatically  stops 
and  the  impulse  is  no  longer  for  growth  but  towards 
fusion. 

In  the  adult  animal,  from  the  time  of  his  reach- 
ing adulthood  until  the  time  of  his  involution  or 
gradual  disintegration  all  the  impulses  springing 
from  the  interaction  of  all  the  parts  of  his  body  are 
toward  the  goal  of  the  fusional  reproduction  not  of 
himself  but  of  other  individuals.  Normally  he 
stops  desiring  increase  of  size  as  an  individual 
while  his  separate  organs  may  in  themselves  still 
have  the  unconscious  impulse  to  continue  to  in- 
crease their  own  size. 

§  14.  Unconsciousness  as  Omnipercipient 

The  unconscious  is  constantly  receiving  impres- 
sions from  the  external  world  while  consciousness 
is  not.  This  does  not  merely  mean  that  we  hear 
when  we  are  asleep,  but  even  when  most  awake  we 
may  be  consciously  absorbed  by  sounds  and  quite 
unaware  of  multitudes  of  sights  that  pass  before 
our  eyes.  We  are  visually  asleep,  so  to  speak,  while 
acoustically  awake.  Or,  vice  versa,  we  may  be 
asleep  to  sounds  while  awake  to  sights.  Further- 
more, we  are  continuously  asleep  now  to  some,  now 
to  others  of  the  impressions  coming  through  the 
various  avenues  of  sensation.     But  the  unconscious 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      139 

is  never  asleep  to  any  of  them  and,  in  addition,  has 
avenues  of  sense  to  which  the  conscious  life  has 
never  been  awakened  and,  as  it  is  a  logical  machine, 
it  is  constantly  making  deductions  and  other  in- 
ferences about  the  factors  of  the  environment.^ 

For  example,  in  a  human  supposedly,  for  argu- 
ment's sake,  capable  of  a  growth  in  perfectly  sym- 
metrical proportion  to  a  size  ten  times  greater  than 
normal  we  may  imagine  that  when  he  has  grown 
10  per  cent,  greater  than  the  average,  his  uncon- 
scious, to  speak  figuratively,  calls  a  halt  on  this 
mere  growth-for-size  business,  and  says  to  the  vari- 
ous tissues  and  organs  making  him  up :  "  Look  here, 
this  increase  has  got  to  stop.  If  you  go  on  increas- 
ing you  will  not  be  able  to  get  a  single  girl  to  marry 
you.  You'll  never  find  one  big  enough  for  you. 
Your  individual  organs  and  tissues  are  only  parts 
of  a  machine  that  is  made  for  reproducing  your 
own  kind.  You  want  your  own  peculiar  traits  of 
character  perpetuated  in  offspring.  You  can't  \ 
yourself  live  for  ever.  Your  only  immortality  is  j 
in  your  children  and  grandchildren  and  theirs.  / 
If  you'll  have  the  sense  to  stop  growing  before  you 
collapse  for  sheer  weight  you'll  have  a  chance  to 
live  for  ever  in  your  offspring."  Now  the  uncon- 
scious which  has  figuratively  said  all  that  is  dom- 
inated by  the  will  to  live,  not  a  will  merely  to  grow, 
and  proceeds  to  interest  the  organism  as  a  whole 
in  some  likely  female.  And  the  organism  consents 
to  stop  growing  and  marry  so  it  can  live.     If  it 

1  See  Wilfrid  Lay:  The  Child's  Unconscious  Mind,  page  19. 


140         MAN^S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

went  on  growing  merely,  it  would  surely  die  not 
only  individually  but  racially. 

But  the  unconscious  that  sees  all  that  the  eye 
sees,  which  is  more  than  consciousness  sees,  that 
hears  all  that  comes  into  the  ear,  which  is  more 
sounds  than  the  conscious  ego  is  aware  of,  the  un- 
conscious that  thinks  all  day  and  all  night,  whether 
or  not  conscious  thinking  goes  on,  realizes  the  dis- 
proportion of  mere  growth  very  much  above  the 
average,  and  stops  it  for  its  own  purposes  of  repro- 
duction by  fusion  which  is  its  only  means  of  ag- 
grandizement and  is  independent  of  the  enlarge- 
ment of  the  several  organs  and  tissues  severally, 
and  is  the  dominating  impulse  in  all  animal  life. 

All  that  I  have  said  about  the  limiting  of  growth 
of  the  animal  body  being  solely  for  the  purposes  of 
fusional  reproduction  which  is  the  only  aggrandize- 
ment directly  sought  by  the  unconscious  applies, 
mutatis  mutandis,  to  the  aggrandizement  of  the  ego 
whether  subjective  or  objective.  There  is  a  pur- 
pose in  limiting  the  enlargement  either  of  our  real 
estate  or  our  thoughts,  because  such  enlargement 
unfits  us  for  the  most  wholesome  intercourse,  social, 
spiritual,  and  intellectual,  with  our  fellow-men. 
There  is  an  analogous  fusional  reproduction  of  so- 
cial relations  which  would  be  prevented  by  the  un- 
limited mental  growth  of  any  individual.  Geniuses 
are  lonely  and  animals  are  sociable,  therefore  the 
genius  is  an  abnormal  animal. 

What  I  have  said  about  the  unconscious  and  its 
superiority   over  consciousness  in  the  matter  of 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      141 

sheer  capacity  of  perception  will  explain  my  atti- 
ture  toward  the  so-called  facts  of  spiritism.  My 
thesis  is  that  the  medium  is  one  who  becomes  con- 
sciously aware  of  more  than  does  the  average  man 
and  woman  of  what  has  been  previously  uncon- 
sciously perceived  by  him. 

It  makes  no  difference  what  his  distinctive  per- 
formance is  —  going  into  a  trance  and  saying 
things,  or  writing  without  knowing  what  he  is  writ- 
ing, or  seeing  visual  images  in  a.  crystal  sphere. 
It  is  his  peculiarity  that  makes  him  the  object  of  ^ 
reverence  and  thereby  increases  his  subjective  ego.    / 

And,  as  I  have  said  in  another  place,  the  motives 
for  becoming  a  medium  are  the  unconscious  ones  of 
self-aggrandizement.  If  we  could  all  become  me- 
diums, and  mediumship  had  no  premium  on  it,  some 
other  end  would  be  sought.  The  medium  has  found 
the  way  to  attract  to  himself  the  greatest  amount 
possible,  for  him,  of  human  hero  worship  and  mate-,  ' 
rial  gain,  both  of  which  are  increases  in  his  ego. 

§  15.  The  Medium  as  Unconscious 

It  is  quite  evident  that  the  innumerable  impres- 
sions received  not  by  consciousness,  but  by  the  un- 
conscious during  twenty-five  years,  say,  of  constant 
impressionability  will  neither  be  remembered  by  the 
conscious  ego  nor  recognized  at  once  if  they  should 
be  remembered.  But  it  should  not  be  overlooked  by 
the  student  of  psychological  subjects  that  while  an 
experience  may  never  be  recalled  and  recognized  as 
an  experience  of  one's  own  life,  scientific  investi- 


142        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

gation  of  the  most  rigorous  character  has  shown 
that  such  experiences  may  be,  and  sometimes  are, 
revived  and  recognized  under  the  peculiar  tech- 
nique of  psychoanalysis,  after  the  lapse  of  as  much 
as  thirty  years.  Thus  Ludwig  Frank  of  Zurich  has 
revived  in  his  patients  of  35  years  memories  of 
scenes  and  incidents  that  had  occurred  when  they 
were  5  years  old. 

Now  the  medium  of  30-40  years  old  with  even 
thirty  years  of  impressions  collected  as  a  totality 
in  his  unlimited  unconscious  storehouse  is,  accord- 
ing to  the  theory  of  probabilities,  going  to  have  a 
rather  large  amount  of  human  experience  that  will 
be  quite  similar  to  that  of  almost  any  one  else,  and 
his  utterances,  if  they  can  be  twisted  and  inter- 
preted ^  to  apply  to  the  experiences  of  other  people 
are  quite  likely  to  seem  more  remarkable  than  mere 
coincidences  of  thought,  but  probability  alone 
would  show  that  in  all  likelihood  they  are  not. 

In  short,  my  thesis  is  that  the  verbal  utterances 
of  mediums  are  but  the  fortuitous  emergence  into 
the  mediums'  consciousness,  or  in  some  cases  into 
the  consciousness  not  of  the  medium  but  of  those 
who  listen  to  him  while  he  is  in  his  trance,  the 
emergence  into  consciousness  of  experiences  which 
have  for  years  or  decades  lain  buried  in  the  me- 
diums' own  unconscious,  and  these  utterances  are 
not  the  result  of  telepathic  communication  from  the 
living  or  from  the  spirits  of  the  dead. 

1  It  is  observed  in  Chapter  I,  sec.  15,  that  not  so  very  much 
twisting  is  necessary  to  change  the  fundamental  symbols  of  un- 
conscious thought  into  each  other. 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      143 

Modern  psychology  is  throwing  more  and  more 
light  on  the  unconscious  and  increasing  the  possi- 
bility of  resuscitating  in  the  individual  memories 
which  have  lain  dormant  in  him  for  years,  and  the 
results  achieved  show  that  there  is  in  the  content 
of  the  mediumistic  messages  a  great  similarity  to  N 
that  of  the  ordinary  unconscious  of  the  average  man 
and  woman. 

§  16.  Unconscious  Wishes 

The  cumulative  effect  of  the  unconscious  wishes 
which  keep  pushing  up  from  subliminal  depths  of 
the  seon-olj.  libido  handed  down  to  us  from  the 
dawn  of  the  world  is  such  that  if  our  feeling  of 
reality  is  not  exceedingly  normal  and  vigorous,  if 
not  only  the  evidence  of  all  our  twenty  odd  senses 
but  also  our  knowledge  of  the  significance  of  the  re-  ) 
lations  of  things  in  the  external  world  is  weakened  / 
for  us  to  more  than  an  average  degree,  we  succumb 
to  the  pressure  of  the  wishes  from  within  and  are 
forced  to  believe  what  we  know  is  not  so.  The  poor 
fellow  in  the  asylum,  hounded  for  years  with  an 
unconscious  sense  of  inferiority,  a  failure  in  his 
relations  with  all  his  social  environment  is  finally 
forced  to  believe  that  he  is  the  most  powerful  man 
in  the  world.  Napoleon,  and  that  all  the  actual  hap- 
penings about  him  are  ruses,  deceits,  and  illusions. 
Strengthened  by  the  constancy  of  his  disappoint- 
ments, his  wishes  combine  and  incorporate  them- 
selves, and  completely  dominate  and  control  his 
feeling  of  reality.     "  It  must  be  so,  Plato,  thou  rea- 


144         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

sonest  well.     Else  whence  this  pleasing  hope,  this 
fond  desire,  this  longing  after  immortality?  " 

The  fate  of  the  unconscious  wish  in  the  history 
of  the  human  individual  in  the  modern  complicated 
social  fabric  is  one  of  gradual  repression  begin- 
ning in  the  earliest  infancy  and  continued  with  in- 
creasing force  as  the  years  go  by.     The  funda- 

/  mental  unconscious  wish  for  the  magnification  of 
(    the  ego  receives  blow  after  blow  and  finally  being 

\  unable  to  issue  in  this  or  that  specific  act  which 
would  increase  some  power  of  the  individual  at  the 
same  time  decreasing  or  annihilating  the  same  or  a 
similar  power  of  some  other,  the  unconscious  wish 
develops  outward  but  in  a  concealed  manner  adopt- 
ing the  guise  of  something  different.  Yet  it  is  the 
same  wish. 

The  ancient  Greeks  represented  in  various  poet- 
ical myths  the  frustration  of  this  wish  of  man's  to 
be  too  great  for  the  environment,  in  stories  which 
frequently  had  for  their  point  the  folly  of  aping 
the  greatness  of  the  gods.  Thus  Arachne,  the  skil- 
ful spinner,  challenged  Artemis,  and  for  her  pride 
was  turned  into  a  spider.  Niobe's  ego  was  so  mag- 
nified by  her  numerous  and  beautiful  children,  that 
Apollo  shot  them  all  with  his  terrible  bow,  and 
Salmoneus,  who  aspired  to  make  a  thundering  noise 
and  flashing  light  in  rivalry  of  Jupiter's  lightning, 
was  appropriately  punished  for  his  ambitions  to  be- 
come expansive  in  flash  and  detonation. 

The  unconscious  wish  of  the  little  child  for  mere 
extension  of  ego  in  all  directions  is  natural  and 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  AS  AN  URGE      145 

transparent  and  up  to  a  certain  age  amusing.  But 
the  mother-spoiled  child  is  a  terrible  thing  and 
risks  annihilation  at  the  hands  of  the  other  mem- 
i^ers  of  his  environment.  Generally,  however,  the 
great  /  am  of  this  early  age  begins  to  be  gradually 
beaten  into  the  average  mould,  and  less  ostenta- 
tiously to  force  his  mere  undraped,  unvarnished 
ego  into  the  view  of  other  people.  He  begins  very 
early  to  transform  his  mere  expansivity  into  a  dis- 
semination of  virtuous  actions,  virtuous  in  that 
they  are  of  some  service  to  other  people.  Little 
children  will  be  very  helpful  about  the  house  but  it 
is  quite  evident  that  the  help  element  of  their  ac- 
tions affords  them  less  satisfaction  than  the  spread 
of  their  own  activity  over  many  objects,  most  of 
their  good  deeds  being  summed  up  for  them  in  their 
ecstatic  exclamation :  "  You  see  what  /  did  do ! " 
Thus,  however,  is  made  the  beginning  of  the  subli- 
mation of  the  unconscious  wish  for  self -aggrandize;:^ 
ment  —  the  transmutation  of  their  expanding  ego 
into  the  real  things  of  their  environment  —  the 
sublimation  of  the  baser  metal  of  their  self-wishes 
into  the  gold  of  social  acts.  But  the  outward  drive 
from  within  is  the  same  unconscious  wish,  no  mat- 
ter what  the  actual  concrete  result  in  word  or  deed. 
It  is  the  same  stream  that  drives  the  mill,  whether 
electric  light  or  power,  or  brass  or  flour  is  the  end- 
result. 

From  this  it  is  most  natural  to  infer  that  what- 
ever is  done  by  the  individual  whether  it  be  crime 
or  benefaction,  money  hoarding  or  altruism  is  quite 


146        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

impartially  to  be  attributed  to  the  driving  power 
of  the  unconscious  wish.  How  it  happens  to  lead 
one  person  to  crime  and  another  to  the  deeds  of  a 
good  Samaritan  is  a  matter  of  the  individual  his- 
tory of  the  psyche.  It  takes  as  much  libido  to  com- 
mit a  murder  as  to  be  the  parent  of  a  child.     It 

f       takes  as  much  human  energy  to  get  out  a  thou- 

\^  sand  page  report  of  the  sittings  of  a  medium  as  to 
\  prepare  for  publication  the  results  of  any  scientific 
'  investigation.  If  as  much  energy  as  has  been  de- 
voted to  the  study  of  dowsing,  levitation,  lekanom- 
ancy,  telepathy,  materialization  and  repercussion, 
had  been  used  in  more  social  and  less  abnormal  di- 
rections we  might  have  been  better  able  to  use  and 
control  the  emotions  of  mankind. 

As  chemistry  evolved  from  alchemy  and  astron- 
omy from  astrology,  and  certain  branches  of  physi- 
ological psychology  from  phrenology,  through  the 
gradual  shift  from  the  emphasis  on  the  wish,  e.  g., 
to  produce  gold  from  lead,  to  the  emphasis  on  the 
observed  relations  between  actual  things,  what  was 
the  thing  made  of,  e.g.,  in  other  words  from  the 
purely  pain-pleasure  habit  of  thought  to  the  reality 
principle  in  directed  thinking,^  so  there  may  evolve 
from  the  psychical  research  of  the  present  day  a 

/'     practical  result  for  psychology.     But  we  should  not 
deceive  ourselves  into  thinking  that  it  has  already 

^       come  to  pass  or  that  we  have  knowledge  where  we 

\   only  feel  belief. 

1  See  Chap.  VI,  sec.  16. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   MECHANISMS  ^ 

Having  now  given  enough  illustrations  to  show 
the  unconscious  factor  in  operation  in  quite  a  num- 
ber of  happenings  of  ordinary  life,  I  shall  have  to 
proceed  to  the  so-called  mechanisms  or  observed 
tendencies  in  the  unconscious  mental  activity. 
Based  on  the  feelings  of  sameness  or  familiarity 
and  reinforced  by  the  errant  feeling  of  reality,  the 
activities  of  the  mind  going  on  constantly  below 
the  threshold  of  consciousness  naturally  proceed 
according  to  the  principle  of  identification. 

This  habit  of  unconscious  mind  results  in  many 
things  in  the  objective  world  being  felt  to  be  the 
same  as,  or  to  have  qualities  similar  to,  the  ego.  If 
an  impression  received  from  an  external  stimulus  is 
felt  to  be  that  of  something  similar  to  the  ego,  the 
identification  may  be  said,  by  a  figure  of  speech,  to 
be  centripetal.  Indeed,  psychoanalysts  speak  of  it 
as  introjection.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  an  idea 
originating  in  the  individual's  mind  is  attributed 
as  a  true  predicate  of  some  external  thing  this  cen- 
trifugal process  is  called  projection. 

§  1.  Association 

The  association  of  mental  activities  includes  that 
of  impressions  with  impressions,  of  impressions 
with  images  and  of  images  with  images.     Impres- 

147 


148        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

sions  are  associated  with  impressions  according  to 
their  contiguity  in  time  or  space.  External  impres- 
sions are  associated  with  internal  impressions 
through  the  reflex  arc.  When  an  infant's  open  eyes 
are  confronted  with  a  bright  light,  he  has  the  ex- 
ternal impression  of  the  light,  also  the  external  im- 
pression of  his  eyes  closing,  also  the  internal  im- 
pression of  discomfort.  Images  are  associated 
with  impressions  according  to  the  same  law  of  con- 
tiguity in  time  or  space,  and  with  each  other  they 
are  associated  by  the  feeling  of  sameness,  another 
internal  sensation.  Whether  there  are  any  innate 
tendencies  to  associate  internal  impressions  with 
external  ones  depends  largely  on  what  internal  im- 
pressions are  included.  If  we  consider  a  natural 
reaction  of  dizziness  as  the  internal  impression  as- 
sociated with  visual  motion  of  a  certain  type,  it 
seems  that  we  must  say  that  some  internal  impres- 
sions are  regularly  associated  with  external  ones. 
Those  that  we  have  observed  to  be  uniformly  thus 
linked,  have  been  called  reactions  on  reflexes.  The 
others  have  been  called  conditioned  reflexes.  The 
internal  impressions  called  emotions  then  fall  under 
the  conditioned  reflexes.  That  is,  they  are  ac- 
quired, the  others  being  innate  or  hereditary. 

Of  the  acquired  or  conditioned  reflexes  or  asso- 
ciations of  mental  activities,  those  that  are  acquired 
in  the  conventional  manner,  have  no  term  that  cor- 
responds to  the  unconventionally  acquired  ones 
which  are  called  displacements. 

There  is  a  class  of  what  one  might  call  centripetal 


THE  MECHANISMS  149 

associations  of  mental  activities  in  which  the  ex- 
ternal stimulus  becomes  more  intimately  associated 
with  the  internal  impression  contiguous  to  it,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  child  later  to  be  mentioned  who  fears 
the  block  on  a  street  where  a  dog  barked  at  him. 
These  associations  of  mental  activities  (e.  g.,  the 
sight  of  the  block  in  question  and  the  internal  im- 
pression called  fear)  constitute  a  linkage  com- 
paratively unusual,  and  result  in  the  image  of  the 
place  having,  for  a  time  at  least,  persistently  at- 
tached to  it  an  emotion  practically  disadvantageous, 
that  is,  not  helping  the  individual  in  his  adaption 
to  his  environment.  This  type  of  association  of 
mental  activity  is  called  introjection  because  the 
stimulus  is  regarded  as  introjected  or,  as  it  were, 
forcibly  made  to  enter  the  minds  of  some  persons, 
to  an  extent,  or  with  a  uniformity,  not  observed  in 
others.  If  the  persistence  of  this  association  of 
fear  with  a  place  for  example  is  excessive,  the  con- 
dition is  called  abnormal,  though  it  should  not  be 
understood  that  abnormal  implies  violation  of  any 
of  nature's  laws,  the  most  extravagant  cases  of  in- 
trojection being  as  much  subject  to  the  law  of  cause 
and  effect  as  is  any  other  association  of  mental  ac- 
tivities. 

If,  however,  an  internal  impression,  for  example, 
a  sense  of  guilt,  is  associated  with  another  person ; 
if  I  am  guilty  and  I  believe  that  some  other  per- 
son knows  of  my  guilt,  this  belief  constitutes  an 
association  of  a,  so  to  speak,  centrifugal  nature  and 
is  called  projection.     The  internal  sensation  or  im- 


150        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

pression  of  the  guilt  is  projected  upon  the  other 
person,  not  in  the  sense  that  he  is  guilty ;  but  in  the 
sense  that  I  attribute  to  him,  without  due  cause, 
the  knowledge  I  myself  have  of  my  own  guilt. 

It  is  to  be  observed  that  here  too  the  association 
of  mental  activities  called  projection  should  be 
called  abnormal  only  in  the  sense  of  being  exces- 
sive as  compared  with  similar  projections  in  aver- 
age people  and  in  no  way  abnormal  in  the  sense  of 
contrary  to  Nature's  laws.  Both  introjection  and 
projection  are  universal  with  all  people  up  to  a 
certain  degree  varying  for  different  circumstances. 
Thus  the  overvaluation  of  the  object  of  love  is  a 
universal  projection. 

It  may  be  stated  that  both  these  associations,  in- 
trojection and  projection,  are  cases  of  identifica- 
tion, one  centripetal,  where  the  stimulus  is  identi- 
fied with  the  associated  internal  impression,  the 
other  centrifugal,  where  the  external  stimulus  is 
identified  with  the  image  or  internal  sensation 
though  it  is  neither  the  one  nor  the  other. 

There  is  a  distinction  too  between  the  identifica- 
tion on  the  one  hand  of  an  external  with  an  internal 
activity  such  as  that  just  mentioned,  an  identifica- 
tion which  is  called  subjective  (because  something 
external  is  associated  with  something  internal)  ; 
and  on  the  other  hand  the  identification  of  two  ex- 
ternal things.  This  second  type,  the  external 
identification,  is  called  transference,  its  classical 
illustration  being  the  identification  of  teacher, 
clergyman,  lawyer,  physician,  car  conductor,  or 


THE  MECHANISMS  151 

cicerone  of  any  kind  with  the  imago  of  the  early 
representative  of  all  knowledge,  power  and  author- 
it}^  the  father. 

In  all  associations  of  mental  activities  we  have 
integrations  of  the  things  associated,  the  two  or 
more  mental  activities  associated  tending  to  become 
unities  in  the  sense  of  belonging  to  each  other  and, 
as  it  were,  each  constituting  a  part  of  a  whole. 
Thus  the  impressions  and  images,  very  many  in 
number,  which  constitute  the  infant's  idea  of  its 
mother  are  integrated  into  what  has  been  called 
the  mother  imago,  an  integration  which  tends  to 
persist  unchanged,  in  the  unconscious,  and  in  some 
individuals  to  retain  its  integrity  for  many  years. 

If  the  integrations  are  ordinary,  average,  and 
practically  universal  in  the  social  group,  they  be- 
long to  the  class  I  mentioned  above  as  nameless, 
but  which  I  might,  on  the  analogy  of  their  op- 
posites,  call  placements.  If  they  are  excessive,  per- 
sistent over  more  than  the  average  time,  and  pecul- 
iar or  eccentric  they  are  called  displacements. 

§  2.  Humans  Subject  to  Natural  Law 

If  we  regard  all  mental  states  and  activities  as 
taking  place  according  to  laws  which  are  valid  for 
those  mental  conditions  and  for  ourselves  in  so  far 
as  we  are  those  mental  states  and  activities,  and 
equally  valid  for  all  human  and  animal  mental 
powers  alike,  we  shall  have  to  admit  that  we  or  any 
of  us  cannot  change  those  laws  capriciously  even 
though  we  may  be  able  to  imagine  them  changed. 


152        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

It  is  perfectly  possible  to  conceive  the  opposite  of 
everything  that  exists. 

We,  on  the  contrary,  are  the  phenomena  of  those 
laws,  the  illustrations  of  those  principles.  We  are 
the  data  from  which  those  general  law  s  have  been 
discovered,  we  and  animals  and  plants  and  stones ; 
and  it  requires  a  very  forceful  argument  to  prove 
that  these  modes  of  mental  action  are  different  from 
the  modes  of  action  and  from  the  conditions  of  the 
material  universe.  Psychical  research  is  striving 
to  prove  that  the  laws  of  the  material  universe  are 
not  the  same  as  those  of  the  world  of  mind  and 
spirit  and  this  without  adequately  showing  w^hat  is 
the  relation  of  mind  or  spirit  to  matter,  and  even 
incidentally  what  mind  or  spirit  really  is.  For  it 
cannot  be  defined  apart  from  matter,  in  combina- 
tion with  which  alone  we  know  w^hat  we  do  of 
"  spirit.''  The  psychical  researchers  are  present- 
ing us  with  a  concept  which  they  call  spirit,  with- 
out being  able  to  describe  it  in  terms  of  matter, 
because  everything  they  say  it  can  do  that  matter 
cannot  do,  is  contrary  to  the  obseiTed  laws  of  mat- 
ter, and  everything  that  they  offer  as  a  descrip- 
tion of  it  must  be  made  necessarily  in  material 
terms.  "  Here,''  say  they,  "  is  an  insect  that  can- 
not fly,  it  has  no  wings;  that  cannot  walk,  it  has 
no  legs ;  that  cannot  swim,  it  has  no  fins ;  that  can- 
not reproduce  sexually,  it  has  no  ova;  that  multi- 
plies by  growing  twice  as  large  as  it  was  and  then 
breaking  in  tw^o  in  the  middle."  This  is  a  very  in- 
teresting insect,  but  it  is  so  lacking  in  traits  that 


THE  MECHANISMS  153 

we  like  to  attribute  to  insects  that  it  is  almost  if  not 
quite  impossible  for  us  to  call  it  an  insect.  We 
really  could  not  call  it  so,  scientifically. 

§  3.  Personality 

Similarly  the  personality,  evidence  of  which  is 
offered  as  existing  somewhere  after  the  body  is  dis- 
integrated which  we  knew  as  the  outward  expres- 
sion of  the  spirit  or  character  of  the  person  we 
called,  e.  g.,  Betsy  Binn.  We  cannot  hear  her  voice 
or  touch  her  hand  or  recognize  any  of  her  modes  of 
thought,  positively,  though  there  may  be  analogies 
between  what  the  medium  says  and  writes  and  what 
Betsy  Binn  used  to  say  and  do.  But  these  analo- 
gies are  not  greater  than  between  any  two  people 
of  equal  cultivation,  and  if  the  medium  even  in  her 
waking  state,  should  say  to  us:  "I'll  act  Betsy 
Binn  for  you ;  I'll  be  your  real  old  Betsy,"  she 
might  if  she  lived  with  us  long  enough  learn  ex- 
actly how  we  liked  our  eggs  done,  and  our  house 
run  in  general  and  we  could  feel  quite  content  with 
the  medium  Mrs.  T.  or  Mrs.  P.,  for  if  she  tried  very 
earnestly  she  might  even  out-Betsy  our  old  Binn, 
and  it  would  be  "  Bless  thee,  Betsy;  thou'rt  trans- 
lated I  "  But  while  she  might  really  do  better  than 
our  old  cook,  we  should  be  eyed  askance  if  we  wrote 
a  brochure  in  scientific  language  purporting  to 
prove  that  the  essence  of  Betsy  Binn  had  added  it- 
self to  the  essence  of  our  present  cook  Mrs.  T.,  and 
had  given  us  unmistakable  evidence  of  being  no 
other  than  Betsy  herself  reincarnated  in  the  now 


154         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

active  president  of  our  kitchen.  Some  one  might 
ask  us  what  we  thought  was  the  scientific  status  of 
a  body  with  two  souls,  when  we  w^ere  not  sure  of 
the  exact  relation  of  any  given  body  to  even  one 
soul. 

Multiple  personality  would  be  the  answer  of 
course.  But  would  not  almost  any  one  if  studied 
with  the  greatest  care,  and  with  the  sole  aim  of 
discovering  at  least  two  personalities  in  his  mind- 
body,  would  not  almost  any  one  be  found  to  have 
at  least  two  such  well-defined  personalities  ^^  in 
him  "  if  enough  care  were  spent  in  the  actual  work 
of  definition.  Every  separate  one  of  the  "  step- 
ping stones  of  our  dead  selves,"  the  layer  after 
layer  of  our  lives  that  has  sunk  into  oblivion  can, 
if  enough  analytical  research  is  devoted  to  it,  be 
isolated  out  and  be  called  a  separate  personality, 
so  that  each  one  of  us  has  as  many  personalities 
in  storage  so  to  speak,  as  he  has  had  epochs  or 
periods  or  episodes  in  his  past  life.  A  man  lives 
his  youth  in  England  as  a  machinist,  marries  and 
has  two  children.  His  wife  dies  and  he  leaves  his 
children  in  England  to  be  educated,  comes  to  Amer- 
ica and  becomes  a  travelling  salesman,  marries 
again  and  has  more  children,  loses  wife  and  chil- 
dren, goes  to  Australia  and  becomes  a  farmer. 
And  so  on,  as  many  times  as  you  want.  Now  in 
each  place  he  has  quite  different  environment  and 
shows  a  different  personality.  His  English  wife 
was  clinging  and  he  was  cruel.  His  American  wife 
was  self-assertive  and   cowed  him  into   specious 


THE  MECHANISMS  155 

meekness.  His  Australian  wife  was  a  butterfly  and 
made  liim  madly  jealous.  His  other  wives  and 
families  —  But  is  be  one  person  or  X  persons? 
And  what  is  his  spirit?  A  common  quality  run- 
ning through  his  variegated  life?  Which  shall  we 
elect  to  perpetuity?  Possibly  some  of  the  dazed- 
ness  reported  by  "  spirits  "  newly  arrived  on  the 
"  other  side  "  is  that  of  persons  who  are  bewildered 
by  the  problem  of  finding  out  who  they  really  are. 
Which  circle  of  growth,  if  we  had  to  choose  one, 
should  we  call  the  tree? 

To  return  to  the  previous  topic.  If  we  regard 
human  personality  as  the  effect  of  the  laws  known 
to  applied  science,  we  shall  have  to  attribute  the 
same  kind  of  mentality  to  animals  and  all  other 
types  of  life  as  we  do  to  humans  though  not  in  the 
same  degree.  Something  like  intelligence,  some- 
thing like  consciousness  is  observed  in  even  the 
lowest  orders  of  life.  Plants  act  as  if  they  per- 
ceived and  reacted  according  to  their  perceptions. 

Atoms  of  hydrogen  do  not  unite  with  atoms  of  \ 
oxygen  because  they  are  perceived  by  humans  to  do 
so.  The  chemical  laws  thus  far  observed  are  es- 
sentially objective  and  uninfluenced  by  human 
wishes.  The  physiological  laws  according  to  which 
we  move  and  grow  are  not  changed  by  any  mental- 
ity which  they  themselves  produce.  Cells  prolifer-\ 
ate  and  chemical  combination  takes  place  and 
thoughts  arise  from  the  unconscious,  all  according 
to  unalterable  modes  of  action,  but  not  because  of 
the  feeling  of  similarity  in  one  man's  physical  or- 


156         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

ganism,  that  enables  him  to  see  what  things  are,  to 
him,  like  what  other  things. 

A  secondary  personality  is  a  repressed  personal- 
ity and,  as  such,  is  an  organization  of  tensions 
which  strives  to  make  itself  known  to  consciousness, 
although  it  itself  is  in  the  unconscious  because  it 
has  been  repressed.  Its  means  of  disguising  itself 
so  as  to  pass  the  censor  of  consciousness  consist  in 
the  symbolizations  made  possible  by  the  existence 
of  the  feelings  of  sameness  and  similarity.  The 
history  of  secondary  personalities  is  that  they  have 
either  been  brought  into  the  consciousness  of  the 
primary  personality  by  means  of  hypnotism  or  have 
alternated,  as  in  cases  like  that  of  Ansel  Bourne, 
one  with  another  without  apparent  external  cause. 

The  medium  is  evidently  an  example  of  multiple 
personality,  the  elements  of  which  come  into  view 
of  the  observers  through  the  trance,  through  auto- 
matic writing,  through  crystal  gazing  and  other 
ways.  It  is  obvious  that  the  seance  is  a  method 
very  advantageous  to  the  medium  in  which  to  allow 
now  one  and  now  another  of  the  organization  of 
tensions  constituting  the  different  secondary  per- 
sonalities to  come  out  in  external  expression.  I 
consider  the  contortiotis  and  other  physical  mani- 
festations to  be  due  partly  to  conventionalized  dra- 
matic "  business,"  partly  to  the  emotions  abreacted 
by  the  medium.  Dr.  Ludwig  Frank  in  his  book 
elsewhere  mentioned,  has  given  a  vivid  account  of 
the  intensely  dramatic  actions  of  his  patients  in  the 
half  sleep  catharsis  with  which  he  treats  them. 


THE  MECHANISMS  157 

The  primary  personality  always  has  the  best  of 
reasons  for  repressing  into  the  unconscious  the 
material  making  up  the  secondary  personalities. 
In  the  most  of  us  this  repression  is  almost  com- 
pletely successful,  the  exceptions  being  our  harm- 
less compulsions,  phobias,  superstitions  and  other 
idiosyncrasies.  But  in  the  case  of  the  neurotic, 
whose  repression  is  unsuccessful,  the  material  of 
the  secondary  personality  breaks  forth  as  the  neu- 
rosis, and  in  the  medium  it  issues  in  his  variegated 
performances. 

§  4.  Unconscious  Memory 

Constituted  as  we  are  now,  however,  in  the  twen- 
tieth century,  we  see  and  feel  and  act  in  certain 
ways  that  have  been  as  yet  but  imperfectly  de- 
scribed and  scientifically  correlated.  I  offer  the 
suggestions,  which  have  appeared  to  me  to  be  made 
by  my  reading  on  the  subject  of  the  unconscious, 
by  my  own  introspection,  and  the  observation  of 
other  people  analytically  studied  by  me,  sugges- 
tions concerning  the  inadvisability  of  making  any 
definite  statements,  yet,  about  the  post  mortem  or 
extra  corporeal  ante  mortem  existence  or  activity 
of  that  very  hazy  and  indefinite  thing  called  mind 
or  spirit.  All  the  stronger  is  the  suggestion  be- 
cause of  the  actual  novelty  of  the  facts  discovered 
concerning  the  mind  in  us  that  sees  what  we  are 
not  conscious  of  seeing,  that  hears  what  we  are  not 
conscious  of  hearing,  that  feels  what  we  are  not 
conscious  of  feeling,  and  remembers  what  we  are 


^y 


158         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

not  conscious  of  remembering.  Until  that  time 
shall  come  when  it  will  be  possible  for  each  one 
of  us  to  evoke  from  the  past  the  memory  of  every 
sensation  we  ever  had,  and  examine  it  for  its  bear- 
ing upon  the  so-called  supernormal  media  of  in- 
telligence, it  will  be  impossible  certainly  to  say 
that  the  "  messages ''  received  by  us  in  a  medium's 
trance  are  anything  else  than  messages  from  soma^ 
lower  stratum  of  the  medium's  unconscious  mem-  ' 
ory,  which,  because  of  some  factor,  which  at  pres- 
ent we  are  only  beginning  to  recognize  and  under- 
stand, the  medium  is  able  to  deliver. 

The  lower  we  go  in  the  strata  of  unconscious 
memory,  the  farther  back  in  the  biography  of  the  in- 
v_  dividual  we  go.  If  in  some  future  time  the  im- 
pressions received  in  prenatal  life  are  ever  revived 
by  one  individual  and  compared  with  those  received 
at  a  similar  stage  of  development  by  another  in- 
dividual, there  is  little  doubt  that  they  would  be 
exactly  alike  and  consist  mainly  of  pressure  and 
motion  and  dim  indistinct  sound.  There  would  be 
no  sight,  no  smell,  no  taste,  no  temperature,  and 
little  fulness  and  emptiness  feeling. 

Similarly  if  we  trace  back,  as  has  actually  been 
done  by  psychoanalysts,  the  associations  of  mental 
states  and  activities  in  the  individual  to  their  earli- 
est occurrences,  we  find  them  all  revolving  about 
(p  the  central  ideas  of  mother  and  father  and  brothers 

and  sisters.  In  humanity  the  comparatively  great 
length  of  the  period  of  infancy,  i.  e.,  dependent  post- 
natal life,  makes  it  evident  that  this  helplessness. 


THE  MECHANISMS  159 

joined  to  a  comparatively  active  mental  life,  in 
eluding  the  incipient  use  of  language,  accounts  for 
the  fact  that  we  are  all  cast  in  the  same  mould,  all 
thinking  about  the  same  things,  all  having  prac- 
tically the  same  impressions  for  five  to  seven  years, 
all  actuated  by  precisely  the  same  instincts  and 
impulses  which  centre  about  the  relations  of  the 
different  members  of  the  family  to  each  other  and 
to  us.  ^ 

If,  then,  a  medium  succeeds  in  tapping  some  very 
early  impressions  and  in  giving^  them  out  to  the 
^   consciousness  of  other  peopl^'^  though  he  may  not 
r  be  conscious  of  them  himself,  he  is  quite  likely  to 
reproduce  memories  of  what  might  have  happened 
equally  well  to  his  sitters  in  their  infancy  or  early 
childhood  or  to  any  one  else  whatever,  brought  up 
"in  any  degree  similar  environment.     These  inci- 
.   dents  would  quite  as  well  fit  the  recently  dead  as 
I  the  living,  and  fit  those  who  died  a  thousand  years 
ago  as  well  as  those  who  died  yesterday.     The  the- 
ory of  probability  is  twisted  by  the  spiritualists  who 
I   say  there  is  not  one  chance  in  a  million  that  the 
medium  could  guess  correctly.     About  some  things 
there   is   the   same   chance  that   he   could   guess 
wrongly.     Given  enough  indefiniteness  in  statement 
and  matters  from  a  deep  enough  level  of  uncon- 
scious memory  he  can't  guess  wrongly  if  he  tries. 
The  main  principles  of  the  occurrence  of  mental 
states  and  activities  are  the  mechanisms  of  the  un- ' 
conscious,  all  of  which  might  be  included  in  the  one 
term  integrations.     The  mind  tends,  just  as  nature 


160         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

everywhere  tends,  to  make  units  or  individual  or- 
ganisms. This  integration  in  psychological  mate- 
rial is  carried  out  through  the  association  or,  as  it 
has  sometimes  been  called,  colligation  of  activities. 

§  5.  Earliest  Sensations 

The  earliest  sensation  making  an  impression  on 
the  recording  apparatus  of  the  developing  nerve 
substance  is  in  some  manner  associated  or  colli- 
gated with  a  subsequent  impression.  Nature  seems 
to  have  arranged  it  that  when  another,  a  third,  im- 
pression is  made  it  is  able,  if  sufficiently  similar 
to  the  first,  say  sound  impression,  to  make  a  re- 
action in  another  part  of  the  organism  and  either 
to  make  no  reaction  in  this  part  or  to  make  a  dif- 
ferent reaction  if  the  second  sound  impression  is 
different  in  quality.  If  the  unborn  child  could 
think  we  should  imagine  him  thinking  to  himself 
"  There's  a  sound !  I  heard  a  sound  once  before. 
Nice  to  hear  sound  again.''  Or  "  That's  a  squeeze ! 
Hate  to  be  all  squeezed  up."  And  later:  "That 
squeeze  was  w^orse  than  the  other."  But  we  sup- 
pose it  cannot  think,  though  we  know  that  the 
physiological  material  for  all  those  judgments  is 
there  long  before  birth. 

The  identification  of  one  mental  state  or  activity 
of  his  own  with  another  of  his  own  is  followed  in 
due  time,  after  birth  and  physically  independent 
existence,  by  an  identification  of  himself  with  ob- 
jects in  the  external  world.  He  identifies  himself 
with  them  intellectually  and  emotionally.     Intel- 


THE  MECHANISMS  161 

lectually  his  identification  is  objective  or  centri-^ 
fugal  in  character  and  may  be  illustrated  by  num- 
bers of  childish  ideas.  He  thinks  the  clouds  are 
made  of  smoke.  For  him  smoke  is  only  his  im- 
pression of  smoke,  and  clouds  are  seen  to  be  similar 
visually  in  some  respects. 

§  6.  Introjection 

It  appears  then  that  the  internal  sensations  are 
the  medium  by  which  he  centripetally  identifies  or 
introjects,  and  the  external  sensations  are  the 
means  of  his  making  centrifugal  or  objective  identi- 
fications or  projecting.  It  might  be  said  that  he 
attributes  his  feelings  to  things  and  therefore' 
should  be  said  to  project  them,  but  that  is  not  an 
accurate  way  to  word  the  matter.  In  introjection 
which  is  an  emotional  activity  he  adds  to  the  num- 
ber of  things  which  cause  him  emotional  reactions. 
Fear  which  he  should  properly  feel  only  about  being 
born  again,  he  feels  about  other  things.  He  col- 
lects into  his  experience  one  thing  after  another  to 
fear  about.  That  is,  he  associates  the  internal  sen- 
sation fear  with  an  ever  increasing  number  of  ex- 
ternals. Therefore  he  introjects  each  and  every 
one  of  them  into  that  section  of  his  emotional  life 
that  comprises  fear.  It  is  an  actual  entrance  of 
things  into  his  life.  This  is  not  the  only  emotional 
reaction,  however,  with  which  he  associates  or  col- 
ligates external  things  and  happenings.  Many  give 
him  pleasure  and  joy.  His  character  is  profoundly 
affected  by  the  nature  and  number  of  the  externals 


162        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

that  give  him  pleasurable  emotions.  I  have  taken 
fear  only  as  an  illustration  where  I  might  have 
taken  several  other  internal  sensations.  But  they 
would  all  illustrate  introjeetion  or  the  taking  of 
real  things  into  his  emotional  life. 

The  identification,  sometimes  called  objective 
identification/  is  that  by  which  later  in  life  a  per- 
son unconsciously  behaves  toward  another  person 
in  the  same  way  that  he  has  behaved  toward  his 
father  or  mother  in  his  childhood  or  to  their  surro- 
gates, and  has  been  called  transference.  The  in- 
ternal sensations  associated  with  the  earlier  person 
are  again  associated  with  the  later  met  individual, 
doctor,  lawyer,  minister  or  other  person  in  author- 
ity, and  lead  to  similar  actions  directed  toward 
him.  Transference  is  thus  a  reassociation  of  emo- 
tions and  stands  half  way  between  the  original  col- 
ligation of  emotions  on  the  one  hand,  and  acts  and 
sensations  on  the  other,  and  the  other  kind  of  asso- 
ciation of  emotions  with  externals  that  are  not 
essentially  and  logically  connected  with  them  — 
the  introjeetion  mentioned  above.  For  taking  a 
later  acquaintance  as  a  father  surrogate  there  is 
frequently  only  the  slightest  external  resemblance. 
It  is  much  as  if  the  psyche,  like  a  child  looking  for 
a  horse  to  ride  on  and  finding  a  stick  and  strad- 
dling it  and  thinking  it  will  do,  was  looking  out 
for  a  father  surrogate  and  would  take  any  one  who 
had  the  remotest  resemblance  to  the  original.  It  is 
easy  to  see  that  this  choice  will  be  very  unlikely  to 

lE.  g.,  see  Frink:  Morhid  Fears  and  Compulsions,  p.  167,  note. 


THE  MECHANISMS  163 

be  a  fortunate  one,  as  the  person  making  it  will  ex- 
perience one  disillusionment  after  another  as  the 
points  of  difference  are  gradually  manifested  to  his 
consciousness.  Such  too  is  the  history  of  many 
cases  of  love  at  first  sight  where  the  man  finds  in 
the  woman  some  quality  that  arouses  all  the  uncon- 
scious passion  he  has  felt  for  his  own  mother,  or 
where  the  woman  falls  in  love  not  with  the  man  as 
a  whole  but  with  some  characteristic  that  resembles 
her  father. 

A  child  is  walking  along  a  street  and  passes  a 
house  from  which  comes  out  a  dog  that  follows  the 
child,  barking.  The  child  is  much  frightened  and 
from  that  time  on  dreads  that  particular  house. 
The  child  has  what  might  be  called  an  exaggerated 
interest  in  the  house.  Particularly  is  this  the  case 
if  the  child,  though  informed  that  the  dog  has  died 
or  has  been  taken  away,  still  feels  a  dread  of  the 
house,  a  not  unknown  situation.  The  house  or  its 
vicinity  has  become  introjected  into  the  child's 
mind.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  observation  that 
some  children  are  more  likely  to  be  affected  that 
way  than  others. 

Again,  a  relative  of  such  a  person  dies  and  the 
death  chamber,  or  even  the  house  in  which  the  death 
took  place  may,  because  of  this  event,  become  an 
unpleasant  place,  and  remain  so  for  a  loilg  time. 
Such  people,  who  retain  thus  the  association  of  un- 
pleasant emotions  with  definite  localities  are  at- 
tributing to  the  locality  a  quality  that  is  like  them- 
selves, they  are  identifying  a  part  of  themselves 


164        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

(their  unpleasant  emotions)  witli  some  thing,  so 
to  speak,  in  itself  absolutely  colourless.  They  are 
introjecting  the  house  into  their  own  psyche.  This 
is  quite  the  history  of  haunted  houses,  except  that 
the  haunted  house  causes  the  introjection  to  take 
place  in  more  people  than  one.  A  house  where 
even  a  violent  and  tragic  death  took  place  would 
not  cause  the  same  identification  with  every  one. 
The  undertaker,  for  example,  would  not  naturally 
feel  much  more  about  it  than  about  any  other  house 
to  which  he  had  been  called.  But  some  of  the 
friends  or  relatives  will  be  particularly  affected 
by  the  death  chamber  itself  and  even  the  house. 
They  may  for  a  long  time  avoid  the  street  in  which 
the  house  is  situated.  Those  on  whose  actions  the 
tragic  death  has  most  effect  are  the  ones  whose  in- 
trojection is  the  greatest. 

We  can  easily  see  here  that  the  psychical  re- 
searcher has  more  than  the  average  man  intro-. 
jected  certain  things.  The  introjection  of  the 
house,  where  the  dog  was,  into  the  child's  mind 
above  is  a  perfectly  ordinary  one.  The  slightly 
added  interest  of  the  house  where  one's  relative  has 
died  is  also  an  ordinary  one  if  it  lasts  only  an 
ordinary  time.  But  the  permanent  obsessive  inter- 
est in  the  questions  of  spiritism  is  an  introjection 
of  an  almost  abnormal  degree.  Introjection  is 
therefore  an  emotional  interest  in  some  external 
thing,  an  interest  that  in  all  persons  is  natural  and 
normal  for  a  brief  period  but  in  some  persons 
reaches  an  unusual  degree  of  intensity.     The  fea- 


THE  MECHANISMS  165 

turing  of  the  photographic  reproductions,  in  news- 
papers, of  scenes  of  murders  and  accidents  is  an 
appeal  to  the  same  introjection  on  the  part  of  the 
readers,  and  the  crowds  that  visit  the  scene  of  an 
accident,  or  murder,  are  giving  evidence  of  a  tem- 
porary introjection.  Any  one  visiting  scenes  of 
that  kind  is  identifying  himself  centripetally  with 
some  feature  of  the  scene.  The  opposite  minded 
man  feels :  "  What  earthly  interest  have  I  in  seeing 
the  blood  stained  wreckage?  "  Though  if  he  ac- 
tually says  it  he  may  be  protesting  too  much,  in 
order  to  disguise  an  unconscious  wish. 

Introjection  is  therefore  an  absolutely  universal      \/ 
characteristic  of  all  of  us.     It  is  only  the  unusual 
interest  and  degree  of  interest  that  marks  the  ab- 
normal tendency  to  introject.     This  tendency  the 
psychical  researcher  shows  in  an  extreme  degree. 

§  7.  Projection 

Projection  is  normal  in  every  one,  but  in  those 
persons  in  which  it  reaches  an  abnormal  degree 
it  is  considered  one  of  the  symptoms  of  paranoia. 
We  project  an  idea  upon  some  person  or  thing 
when  we  attribute  to  that  person  or  thing  ideas  or 
feelings  that  really  originate  in  our  own  minds; 
and,  in  attributing  to  a  person  an  idea,  we  think 
that  he  has  that  idea.  For  example,  a  bad  con- 
science is  a  quite  universal  instance  of  normal  pro- 
jection. If  we  have  done  anything  bad,  it  is  bad 
only  because  other  people  think  it  is  bad  or  would 
think  it  bad  if  they  knew  we  had  done  it.     If  we 


166         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

were  absolutely  sure  that  no  one  else  would  con- 
sider a  given  action  immoral  it  would  not  be  im- 
moral but  would  be  un-moral  or  non-moral.  So  it 
,  is  evident  that  our  judgment  of  the  morality  of  our 
I  own  actions  is  practically  in  every  instance  the 
'  criticism  which  Ave  know  or  imagine  other  people 
^  would  make  of  that  action.  Very  young  children 
are  without  this  moral  sense,  and  their  elders  are 
talking  to  them  all  the  time  about  this  and  that 
being  naughty ;  so  that  they  naturally  get  the  idea 
that  criticism  of  their  actions  is  the  most  common 
attitude  of  other  people.  After  a  while  they  ac- 
quire a  habit  of  automatically  considering  whether 
or  not  a  proposed  action  is  bad.  Now  the  criti- 
cism has,  to  be  sure,  originally  come  from  with- 
out, from  parent  or  teacher,  but  in  a  particular 
instance,  later,  the  proposed  actit)n  may  not  be  of 
sufficient  interest  to  arouse  any  criticism  favour- 
able or  unfavourable  on  the  part  of  any  one  in  the 
child's  environment.  Yet  the  idea  that  mother  or 
father  might  not  like  it  occurs  to  the  child  in  con- 
nection with  the  action.  Actually  the  child  does 
not  know  that  it  will  displease  his  father  or  mother. 
The  idea,  however,  that  it  will  be  criticized  occur- 
ring to  the  child's  mind,  is  in  this  instance  at  any 
rate  an  idea  that  did  not  originate  from  without. 
If  this  idea  is  accompanied  by  a  vivid  enough  real- 
ity feeling,  it  will  be  projected  by  the  child  upon 
the  parent,  the  child  will  think  the  parent  averse 
to  his  action,  will  credit  the  parent  with  an  atti- 
tude not  really  taken  by  the  parent. 


THE  MECHANISMS  167 

This  notion  on  the  child's  part  that  the  parent 
thinks  unfavourably  of  his  proposed  action  is  the 
projection  of  the  child's  state  of  mind  upon  the 
parent,  that  is  the  projection  upon  that  part  of  the 
parent's  character  actually  experienced  by  the 
child  of  an  idea  originating  in  the  child's  mind  and 
not  actually  experienced  by  the  child  in  his  contact 
with  the  parent.  The  parent's  character  is  then 
partly  actual,  partly  imaginary.  It  might  be  said 
that  in  this  sense  the  projection  is  the  imaginary 
part  of  the  parent's  character  as  perceived  by  the 
child,  but  it  is  to  be  noted  that  this  part  is  only 
imaginatively  perceived  and  not  actually  experi- 
enced. 

It  is  quite  a  well-known  fact  that  this  projection 
in  some  children  at  any  rate  includes  the  child's 
notion  that  after  he  has  been  guilty  of  doing  some- 
thing he  ought  not  to  have  done,  the  fact  of  his  hav- 
ing done  it  is  patent  to  other  people.  Because  he 
knows  himself  that  he  has  done  wrong  he  gets  the 
idea  that  other  persons  also  know  it  and  that  they 
can  read  it  in  his  face  or  in  his  subsequent  actions. 
He  thus  projects  on  other  people  the  knowledge 
that  he  has  of  his  own  acts,  i.  e.,  he  supposes  that 
other  people  know  what  he  has  done,  though  how 
they  may  know  does  not  occur  to  him,  any  more 
than  they  may  not  know  it.  Every  word,  thought 
or  action  of  the  people  of  his  environment  may  be 
interpreted  by  him  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  him 
believe  that  they  know,  so  that  he  sometimes  is 
quite  puzzled  as  to  why  they  do  not  take  appro- 


a> 


168        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

priate  action.     This  projection  mechanism  is  the 
basis  of  the  old  proverb  Murder  will  out. 

This  contribution  of  projected  states  of  mind  to 
the  experiences  of  actual  reality  throws  a  very 
strong  subjective  colour  over  all  experiences  mak- 
ing it  indeed  a  difficult  if  not  impossible  thing  for 
any  of  us  to  sense  things  and  relations  of  things 
as  they  really  are.  And  when  we  reflect  that  any 
idea,  feeling  or  wish  is  quite  as  likely  as  any  other 
to  be  projected  upon  the  personalities  about  us, 
it  is  no  wonder  that  we  are  unable  to  see  ourselves 
as  others  see  us.  For  this  there  are  two  reasons, 
one  that  in  seeing  ourselves  we  are  more  under 
the  influence  of  our  own  unconscious  wishes  and 
that  we  are  seen  by  others  through  their  own  pro- 
jections. ^^ 

§  8.  Animism 

The  earliest  type  of  thought  among  peoples  be- 
fore the  era  of  simplest  civilization  was  a  projec- 
tion of  their  own  ideas  and  feelings  impartially 
upon  other  persons  and  inanimate  things  whether 
motionless,  like  rocks,  or  moving  things,  like  clouds 
or  rivers,  the  moon,  sun  and  stars.  With  this  pro- 
jection was  connected  the  fact  that  the  most  patent 
characteristic  of  consciousness  is  its  intermittence, 
broken  as  it  is  by  sleep,  by  drugs,  by  a  blow  on  the 
head  and  (a  less  patent  fact)  minutely  broken  by 
the  very  passage  from  one  conscious  impression  to 
another  of  a  different  sense  quality. 

It  can  hardly  be  denied  that  the  most  untutored 
mind  would   sometime   experience  the   length   of 


THE  MECHANISMS  169 

time  of  darkness  between  sunset  and  sunrise,  and 
on  another  occasion  perhaps  would  experience  the 
fact  that  he  had  slept  most  of  this  time.  In  all 
this  time  spent  in  sleep  between  sunset  and  sun- 
rise where  was  he?  The  memory  of  a  dream 
would  suggest  to  him  that  he  might  have  been  miles 
away  from  where  he  knew  his  body  was  sleeping. 
He  was  then  different  from  his  body,  sometimes  in 
it,  and  sometimes  out  of  it.  He  dreams  he  is  an 
eagle  flying  high  in  the  air.  Therefore  he  can  leave 
his  body,  if  it  is  asleep,  and  enter  the  body  of  an 
eagle.  But  there  is  something  that  keeps  on  en- 
tering and  leaving  his  body  rhythmically  all  day  — 
his  breath.  On  cold  mornings  he  can  see  it  leave 
his  nostrils.  And  the  word  for  breath  in  most 
languages  is  the  word  for  spirit.  Therefore  his 
spirit  or  the  breath  or  air  form  of  his  body  can 
leave  his  flesh-and-blood  body  and  "naked  on  the 
air  of  heaven  ride.'' 

But  other  people  and  animals  have  breath.  He 
can  see  and  feel  it  too.  They  too  have  spirits. 
The  waterfall  has  a  spirit.  He  can  see  it  passing 
from  the  cataract  in  a  fine  mist.  The  trees  have 
spirits  too,  which  gather  in  filmy  clouds  on  the 
mountain  sides.  Sometimes  they  take  the  form 
of  a  tree  or  an  animal. 

If  the  spirit  does  not  return,  the  body  never 
moves  again  and  presently  disintegrates.  What 
could  be  more  patent  to  the  senses.  The  untu- 
tored mind  projects  upon  the  dead  the  idea  emanat- 
ing from  his  own  mind,  namely  that  his  spirit  has 


170        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

departed.  When  the  untutored  mind  dreams,  he 
is  able  to  do  things  he  could  not  have  done  in  his 
body;  therefore  the  spirits  of  the  dead  can  pass 
from  place  to  place,  can  enter  the  bodies  of  other 
men  and  animals,  can  enter  trees,  waterfalls,  moun- 
tains or  the  heavenly  bodies. 

Yet  this  notion  that  the  spirit  leaves  the  body  is 
but  a  projection  in  the  sense  we  have  just  used  it 
above.  It  is  the  supposition  that  other  people  have 
the  same  ability  to  "  cast  the  dust  aside ''  and  do 
what  he,  the  untutored  mind,  thinks  he  can  do  him- 
self, and  furthermore  that  other  animate  and  in- 
animate beings  have  the  same  powers.  .  As  a  bit  of 
scientific  reasoning,  it  is  absolutely  on  a  par  with 
the  reasoning  of  a  child  that  his  parents  know  that 
he  has  done  wrong  or  that  they  will  scold  or  pun- 
ish him  for  this  particular  wrong. 

There  is  absolutely  nothing  abnormal  or  un- 
usual about  this  purely  human  habit  of  thought 
called  projection.  It  is  a  thought  mechanism  op- 
erative in  all  thinking  individuals,  only  it  is  not 
productive  of  scientific  judgments. 

§  9.  Attitude  Toward  Departed 

Now  if  we  confine  our  discussion  to  the  feelings 
of  the  survivors  concerning  the  dead,  we  shall  find 
from  a  study  of  funeral  rites  and  mourning  cus- 
toms among  primitive  peoples  that,  in  all  of  these 
rites  and  customs  factors  are  present  which  show 
both  love  and  hate,  friendliness  and  hostility,  both 
actual  and  projected.     The  friendliness  and  love 


THE  MECHANISMS  171 

are  shown  in  the  ancestor  worship,  and  the  hate 
and  hostility  in  the  belief  in  evil  spirits  and  de- 
mons; and  we  shall  see  that  all  of  these  are  pro-      •' 
jections  on  the  part  of  the  suryivors.^ 

It  may  well  be  the  ease  that  the  departed  was  a 
character  of  mingled  good  and  evil,  as  indeed  we 
all  are,  but  the  thoughts  that  occur  about  him  tend 
of  their  own  accord  to  integrate  themselves  into 
systems  and  for  a  short  time  after  his  death  the 
departed  savage  is  regarded  as  a  hostile  spirit, 
who  has  to  be  appeased  in  c. ery  possible  way  so 
that  he  may  not  do  harm  to  the  survivors.  It  may 
happen  that  just  this  attitude  of  primitive  man  ' ) 
toward  the  dead  may  still  live  in  the  present  day  r 
in  the  shape  of  attention  given  by  the  psychical  re- 
searchers to  spiritual  phenomena.  It  is  in  one 
sense  both  an  ancestor  worship  and  an  exorcism  es- 
sentially, in  effect,  though  done  in  the  guise  of  ex- 
perimental science.  In  any  case  it  is  a  projection 
as  evident  to  the  truly  scientific  mind  as  are  the 
most  obvious  projections  of  the  child  or  the  savage. 

§  10.  Science  and  the  Reality  Feeling 
It  is  characteristic  of  science,  however,  on  the  y'' 
other  hand  to  disregard  entirely  the  reality  feeling 
as  a  criterion  of  reality  and  to  substitute  for  it 
observed  relations  of  things.  And  these  relations 
of  things  do  not  in  any  way  impress  this  internal 
sense  which  I  have  described  as  the  feeling  of  real- 
ity.    The  facts  of  science  are  things  that  are  un- 

1  Cp.  Chap.  VIII,  sec.  7. 


172        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

able  to  awaken  this  sensation  of  reality  which  is 
the  internal  or  organic  sense  impressed  by  the  co- 
operative working  of  all  the  other  senses.  Some 
of  the  facts  of  astronomy  for  example  are  such  as 
to  leave  the  subjective  feeling  of  reality  quite  un- 
touched, yet  no  one  has  any  doubt  of  their  actuality 
nor  can  any  one  be  said  merely  to  believe  them  who 
has  taken  the  trouble  to  acquaint  himself  with 
them.  He  can  truly  be  said  to  know  that  they  are 
real  without  their  even  having  impressed  his  in- 
ternal reality  feeling  in  the  least. 

Similarly,  he  may  be  truthfully  said  to  know  the 
facts  of  animal  cell  structure  after  study  of  stained 
specimens  by  means  of  the  microscope.  He  knows 
there  are  objects  called  chromosomes  or  "  coloured 
bodies  "  in  the  cell  because  certain  dyes  adhere  to 
them  and  render  them  visible  to  his  eye. 

He  does  not  project  upon  the  stars  on  the  one 
hand,  nor  upon  the  cell  plasm  on  the  other  hand 
any  of  his  own  subjective  notions.  His  entire  pro- 
cedure has  been  wholly  to  exclude  anything  like 
such  projection.  This  projection,  however,  was  the 
rule  in  ancient  star  gazing.  We  speak  today  of  a 
constellation  as  Orion  because  the  ancient  Greeks 
projected  their  own  notions  upon  the  stars,  and 
scientific  language  still  contains  the  verbal  relics 
of  earlier  projections  as  in  the  word  oxygen  which 
describes  the  ideas  about  that  gas  entertained  by 
the  early  chemists,  namely  that  it  created  acids. 

It  may  be  replied  that  in  a  sense  any  scientific 
theory  is  a  projection  in  that  it  is  a  human  view  of 


THE  MECHANISMS  173 

a  concrete  reality.  But  it  may  be  answered  that 
the  supposition  is  made  only  to  see  if  it  will  work, 
and  is  immediately  replaced  by  another  supposi- 
tion if  it  does  not  work.  In  contrast  to  which  the 
attitude  of  the  spiritists  is  always  to  find  proofs 
of  the  objective  reality  of  their  own  projections, 
though  they  strenuously  deny  this  attitude  when- 
ever it  is  intimated.  The  whole  history  of  the  Spir- 
itistic movement  is  that  of  a  recrudescence  of  the 
animism  of  primitive  man,  it  is  the  effort  to  be  sci- 
entific in  doing  an  absolutely  unscientific  thing.  It 
is  the  continued  struggle  to  get  scientific  proof  for 
a  belief,  as  contrasted  with  the  attempt  of  the  true 
scientist  to  ascertain  what  really  are  the  relations 
of  things  quite  apart  from  the  conscious  or  uncon- 
scious wish  for  something  that  may  or  may  not 
exist.  It  is  again  the  constant  attempt  to  prove 
one  thing,  namely  the  independent  existence  of 
"  spirit  "  apart  from  matter,  which  as  we  have  seen 
above,  is  the  belief  (that  is,  the  unconscious  wdsh) 
of  the  untutored  mind.  The  motives  for  this  wish 
have  been  discussed  elsewhere. 

§  11.  Science  and  Projection 
The  contrast  between  projection  and  scientific 
attitude  is  as  that  between  the  east  and  the  west. 
We  might  almost  use  the  word  injection  to  describe 
the  aim  of  science  which  is  to  get  the  world  as  it 
is  into  the  intellect  of  man,  while  projection  is  get- 
ting the  feeling  of  man  into  the  world  of  reality. 
Now  while  the  aim  of  all  creative  human  work 


174        MAN^S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

is  to  change  external  reality  and  to  impress  as  much 
of  nature  as  possible  with  a  human  stamp,  it  nat- 
m*ally  occurs  to  the  scientist  with  the  widest  view 
of  the  phenomena  of  the  universe  that  not  only  is 
the  humanizing  of  the  universe  a  task  quite  incom- 
mensurate with  human  abilities,  but  also  it  might 
not  in  the  end  be  altogether  desirable  if  it  were 
possible. 

It  is  unquestionable  that  spiritism  is  an  an- 
thropomorphic tendency,  while  science  might  be 
called  cosmomorphic.  All  the  petty  details  of  the 
nature  of  the  clothes  spirits  wear,  of  their  being 
sexed  or  sexless,  of  their  diversions,  even  of  the 
cigars  they  smoke  and  the  food  and  drink  they  en- 
joy, are,  on  the  face  of  them,  projections  as  crass  as 
the  houris  of  the  Mohammedan  paradise,  and  the 
bows  and  arrows  of  the  American  Indian  happy 
hunting  ground ;  and  they  have  far  less  poetical  ap- 
peal than  the  Hellenic  phantasies  of  ambrosia  and 
nectar  and  of  the  golden  apples  of  the  Gardens  of 
the  Hesperides.  Truly  in  matter  of  actual  detail 
the  modern  mythology  is  but  a  rubbish  heap  com- 
pared with  the  ancient,  and  the  one  is  quite  as 
much  a  scientific  demonstration  as  the  other.  The 
ancients  frankly  indulged  in  their  fondest  dreams 
and  projected  them  into  their  myths.  Moderns 
have  been  coerced  in  a  sense  by  scientific  thought 
into  giving  a  materialistic  form  to  their  beliefs,  a 
form  which  lacks  all  the  spontaneity  of  the  ancient 
unrepressed  dream  of  the  future  life.  The  only 
sensible  procedure  for  belief  is  to  acknowledge  it- 


THE  MECHANISMS  175 

self  as  belief.  It  works  much  better  so,  and  pro- 
duces better  results.  It  is  really  more  pragmatic 
in  being  itself  and  not  trying  to  be  something  else. 
But  in  attempting  a  scientific  proof  for  a  sub- 
jective belief- one  puts  the  cart  before  the  horse. 
Bather  should  we  attempt  to  clothe  our  scientific 
truths  with  the  unconscious  wish.  This  suggests 
the  ever-present  conflict  between  inner  and  outer 
life,  a  conflict  which  is  sometimes  compromised  by 
the  tacit  agreement  on  our  part  to  take  the  world 
as  we  find  it  and  not  to  look  in  it  for  something  that 
is  only  in  ourselves.  The  individual's  attitude  is 
determined  by  his  disposition,  the  tender-minded 
idealist  deceiving  himself  as  much  as  he  dares 
to,  the  tough-minded  realist  and  materialist  get- 
ting as  much  pleasure  out  of  an  unimaginative 
life  as  he  can.  Those  concerned  to  an  extreme 
degree  in  the  question  of  either  an  after  life  or 
a  supernormal  sensitivity  in  this  life  are  laying 
excessive  stress  on  the  value  of  the  subjective 
element.  Others,  like  Darwin,  who  at  times  re- 
gretted his  exclusively  rigid  and  scientific  habit 
of  thought,  are  stressing  the  other  values.  There 
is  no  doubt  as  to  where  to  place  the  psychical 
researcher  in  this  classification  of  temperaments. 
Were  it  not  for  the  increasing  insistence  of  sci- 
entific habits  of  mind  there  would  be  no  scientific 
plank  in  the  psychical  research  platform,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  researchers  protest  that  they  do 
not  have  as  their  aim  the  proof  of  spiritism.  Were 
it  not  for  the  fact  that  the  formulations  of  science 


176        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

are  acquiring  more  and  more  of  the  tone  of  author- 
ity, and  that  men  now  realize  that  what  is  known 
can  be  knqwn  only  through  scientific  methods,  there 
would  be  no  motive  for  psychical  research,  for  every 
story  of  an  apparition  or  of  a  voice  from  the  air  or 
of  an  unaccountable  movement  of  any  object  would 
find  ready  belief. 

§  12.  Reality  Thinking  and  Life 

But  nowadays  imagination  and  belief  are  not 
enough  to  make  a  man  successful  in  adapting  him- 
self to  his  environment.  He  needs  the  knowledge 
based  on  statistical  investigation  of  the  relations 
of  things  in  order  successfully  to  manage  his  in- 
surance companies,  his  manufactures,  his  traffic,  his 
chain  stores.  This  shows  that  human  nature  has 
changed  to  the  extent  of  requiring  knowledge  of  re- 
lations of  things  in  the  place  of  belief  as  to  their 
pleasure-producing  or  pain-jiroducing  qualities. 
This  is  the  contrast  elsewhere  mentioned  between 
the  reality  and  the  pleasure-pain  modes  of  think- 
ing. So  that  any  question  as  to  the  relative  value 
of  the  two  modes  is  answered  by  the  facts  of  society 
as  it  exists  today.  The  tendency  is  toward  mate- 
rialism, toward  tough-minded  knowledge,  and  away 
from  tender-minded  belief. 

The  emotions,  which  are  characteristic  of  the  ten- 
der-minded element  of  humanity,  are  nevertheless 
of  positive  value,  and  while  they  are  the  last  to  be 
valued  it  will  soon  be  found  even  by  the  most  tough- 
minded  materialist,  that  they  have  this  concrete 


THE  MECHANISMS  177 

and  merchantable  value,  and  that  a  business  per- 
fectly developed  in  every  other  way  will  not  success- 
fully compete  with  another  which  has  in  addition 
enlisted  the  emotions.  And  it  will  not  be  able  to 
enlist  them  without  a  very  elaborate  investigation 
into  them  such  as  has  never  before  been  undertaken. 
And  without  the  knowledge  of  the  nature  and  func- 
tions of  both  conscious  and  unconscious  emotions 
such  an  investigation  will  be  fruitless.  For  hith- 
erto the  fact  has  been  ignored  not  only  that  the 
emotions  of  surprise,  awe,  reverence  and  profound 
somatic  satisfaction  are  aroused  in  many  people  by 
hearing  the  stories  of  the  triumph  of  spirit  over 
matter,  but  also  that  the  unconscious  emotions  of 
joy  and  sorrow,  disappointment,  love,  hate,  and  rage 
actuate  or  at  any  rate  give  additional  force  to  the 
efforts  of  all  men  in  all  lines  of  activity  whether 
commercial,  professional  or  artistic. 

For  it  should  not  be  forgotten  ( 1 )  that  we  do  all 
things  to  get  a  present  or  postponed  conscious  or 
unconscious  satisfaction  which  is  the  relaxation  of 
tensions  in  our  multitudes  of  muscular  systems 
throughout  the  body,  (2)  that  a  long  continued  ten- 
sion frequently  needs  a  violent  action  in  order  to 
neutralize  it,  and  (3)  that  these  tensions  and  relax- 
ations are  going  on  in  our  bodies  constantly  and 
below  the  level  of  consciousness.  Only  recently  has 
any  positive  contribution  been  made  to  knowledge 
about  the  effects  of  these  neutralizations  in  daily 
life,  their  effects  upon  health,  and  their  causation 
of  functional  diseases.     It  is  not  unlikely  that  in 


178        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

the  near  future  the  intense  anxiety  about  death  and 
the  life  after  death  will  be  commonly  recognized  as 
a  result  of  an  incipient  functional  heart  disorder, 
and  will  show  that  normally  men  have  no  real 
pragmatic  motives  for  giving  a  thought  to  prob- 
lems of  hypersensitivity  and  post  mortem  conscious 
existence,  and  that  the  intense  curiosity  about  the 
solution  of  such  problems  is  a  mark  of  subnormal 
mentality  or  of  a  slight  mental  disorder  which  later 
may  become  more  serious. 

§  13.  The  Reality  Feeling  vs.  Reality  Thinking 

We  must  carefully  distinguish  between  the  real- 
ity feeling  described  in  Chapter  II  and  reality 
thinking  or  thinking  directed  according  to  the  real- 
ity principle.  The  first  is  a  sensation,  an  impres- 
sion made  through  sense  organs  situated  in  the 
body.  The  second  is  a  process  of  thought  deter- 
mined by  observed  relations  between  things  in  the 
external  world.  To  the  illogical  and  unwarranted 
transfer  of  the  reality  feeling  from  external  sen- 
sations to  internally  aroused  visual,  auditory  and 
other  types  of  images  is  due  the  huge  mass  of  volu- 
minously attested  phenomena  that  are  held  to  prove 
the  existence  of  spirit.  To  the  process  of  reality 
thinking  we  are  indebted  for  the  present  state  of 
scientific  knowledge,  which,  though  it  has  not  an- 
swered all  the  questions  we  can  ask,  has  neverthe- 
less performed  a  solidly  constructive  work  in  the 
world. 


THE  MECHANISMS  179 

The  images  of  sight,  sound,  etc.,  which  occur  to 
us  are  all  determined  bj  the  opposite  of  reality 
thinking  namely  the  pleasure-pain  principle.  The 
laws  of  nature  are  discovered  through  the  reality 
principle.  The  idea  of  divinity  is  traceable  from 
the  crudest  theriomorphic  and  anthropomorphic 
forms  to  the  refined  forms  existing  in  the  minds  of 
the  most  cultivated  people  of  today.  This  change 
in  ideas  demonstrates  that  they  are  but  ideas,  being 
the  projections  into  externality,  of  the  unconscious 
wish,  which  is  fundamentally  the  same  and  varies 
in  superficial  details  according  to  the  conscious  life 
of  the  people  in  whom  ideas  of  divinity  arise. 

To  return  to  the  effect  of  the  feeling  of  reality 
upon  belief,  and  the  absence  of  this  subjective  feel- 
ing from  any  scientific  work,  we  must  emphasize 
again  the  importance  of  this  distinction.  The  cri- 
terion which  is  used  in  scientific  observations  where 
instruments  of  precision  are  used  is  the  feeling  of 
sameness,  or  the  feeling  of  similarity.  To  illus- 
trate this  I  would  mention  the  observer  seated  at 
the  telescope  watching  a  star  cross  the  field  of 
vision.  The  task  set  is,  as  the  star  passes  five 
small  lines  in  the  field,  to  record  the  time  by  push- 
ing a  button  that  causes  a  mark  to  be  made  on  a 
revolving  drum  which  keeps  the  time.  The  star 
seems  to  stretch  out  arms  of  light  toward  the  line, 
grasp  it,  swing  round  it,  let  go  and  pass  on  to  the 
next.  Each  time  the  star  swings  round  a  line  the 
observer  has  the  feeling  of  sameness  and  as  he  has 


180        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

it  he  pushes  the  button.  His  action  is  brought  to 
a  focus  by  the  internal,  organic  sensation  of  same- 
ness. 

Again,  if  we  are  matching  two  colours,  we  glance 
from  one  surface  to  the  other  in  order  to  detect  any 
difference,  which  is  recorded  in  us,  up  to  the  limit 
of  our  ability  visually  to  discriminate,  by  the  ab- 
sence of  the  feeling  of  sameness. 

Now  as  the  fineness  of  discrimination,  depending 
possibly  on  purely  visual  impressions  in  either  of 
the  two  illustrations  just  mentioned,  and,  in  the 
first  illustration,  the  rapidity  of  action  in  pressing 
the  button  varies  with  different  individuals  there  is 
recognized  a  difference  of  reaction;  and  this  differ- 
ence, where  human  senses  are  involved  has  to  be 
allowed  for  in  all  exact  measurements  and  is  known 
as  the  personal  equation. 

Also  the  fact  that  this  human  fallibility  is  the 
source  of  error  leads  scientists  to  replace  human 
senses  by  other  sensitive  media  wherever  possible, 
as  in  the  photographs  of  stars,  and,  in  the  ques- 
tion of  colours,  by  refined  methods  of  mixing  and 
distributing  pigments.  And  following  this  the 
psychical  researchers  have  attempted  the  same 
methods  but  with  unavailable  results.  The  "  spirit 
photographs  "  thus  far  produced  have  been  prac- 
tically incomprehensible  or  without  important  sig- 
nificance, as  their  interpretation  is  of  far  more  mo- 
ment than  the  photographs  themselves,  even  if  we 
accepted  them  as  authentic ;  and  they  appear  to  have 
no  connection  with  anything  mental. 


THE  MECHANISMS  181 

§  14.  Unconscious  Perceptions 

Unconscious  perceptions  are  quite  a  familiar  ex- 
perience. As  we  walk  in  a  crowded  street  we  see 
the  face  of  a  person  we  know  and  later  recall  that 
we  have  seen  it.  It  might  be  said  that  we  see  it, 
and  in  another  sense  we  do  not.  The  sight  cannot 
be  called  fully  conscious  nor  yet  can  it  be  called 
absolutely  unconscious  simply  for  the  reason  that  it 
later  appears  in  consciousness  in  the  setting  in 
which  it  actually  occurred,  i.  e.,  as  a  face  among  a 
crowd  of  other  faces.  There  may  be  the  memory 
merely  of  a  face  we  knew  without  the  memory  of 
the  person's  name.  But  the  fact  is  that  later,  for 
example,  when  at  home  after  dinner  we  may  be 
sitting  in  revery,  we  have  this  person's  face  appear 
before  our  mental  eye,  either  with  or  without  the 
consciousness  of  his  name  but  with  the  conscious- 
ness of  its  having  first  been  a  visual  impression 
among  others  of  the  crowded  street.^  This  is  an 
unconscious  perception.  At  any  rate  (if  the  face 
was  perceived  without  the  name)  the  perception 
is  unconscious  in  so  far  as  the  name  itself  is  con- 
cerned. Here  is  a  perception,  then,  at  least  part 
of  which  is  unconscious.  It  may  be  said  that  we 
could  not  perceive  his  name  unless  he  had  been 
tagged  with  it  in  some  way  visible  to  our  physical 
eye.  To  this  we  might  reply  that  the  name  of  any 
one  is  mentally  tagged  on  him  and  that  the  tag 

1  It  will  elsewhere  be  shown  that  only  the  concomitant  feeling 
of  reality  existing  with  the  original  actual  sensation  differen- 
tiates the  so-called  real  experience  from  the  mental  image. 


182        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

should  be  quite  as  visible  to  us  mentally  as  his  face 
was  visually.  In  this  sense  we  unconsciously  per- 
ceive his  name  too,  for  the  association  once  made 
mentally  between  the  man  and  his  name  is  retained 
unconsciously,  as  is  the  whole  series  of  events  and 
experiences  which  are  in  any  way  associated  with 
his  personality.  The  semi-conscious  sight  of  his 
face  was  only  one  link  in  a  chain,  a  link  which 
alone  appeared  above  the  surface  of  consciousness 
leaving  all  the  other  links  of  the  chain  below.  A 
very  definite  reason  is  given  by  psychoanalysis  why 
the  other  links  do  not  emerge,  a  reason  to  which  I 
shall  have  to  refer  elsewhere  in  this  volume. 

But  here  I  wish  to  contrast  on  the  one  hand  the 
semiconscious  perception  of  a  face  in  a  crowd  ac- 
companied, not  at  the  actual  time  but  later,  by  the 
feeling  of  familiarity  which  indicates  the  presence, 
in  the  mind,  of  a  number  of  associations  connected 
with  that  particular  face, —  the  contrast  with,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  number  of  unconscious  percep- 
tions of  facts  about  the  owner  of  the  face,  percep- 
tions that  are  made  by  the  unconscious  mind,  not 
merely  impressions  made  on  it,  and  perceptions 
which  later  may  come  into  consciousness,  at  volun- 
tary summons  or  of  their  own  accord,  and  which 
could  by  no  means  be  called  in  any  sense  conscious 
at  the  time. 

§  15.  Reading  Mechanisms 
As  an  example  of  the  perception  of  things  uncon- 
sciously I  would  offer  the  following  type  of  experi- 


THE  MECHANISMS  183 

ence  which  I  have  had  myself  and  which  other  peo- 
ple   have    communicated    to    me.     In    reading    a 
printed  page  the  eye  is  fixed  upon  one  word  at  a 
time.     While  it  is  fixed  on  that  word,  the  words 
both  to  the  right  and  left  of  it  are  read  so  that  we 
may  say  the  eye  moves  so  many  times  from  left  to 
right  on  each  line  and  at  the  end  of  each  line  jumps 
back  from  right  to  left  and  fixates  one  of  the  let- 
ters, but  not  the  first,  of  the  first  word  on  the  line. 
The  line  is  read  in  groups  of  words,  the  eye  taking 
in  one  group  and  then  passing  to  the  fixation  point 
of  the  next,  jumping  the  distance  one  way,  say,  in 
four  jumps  and  then  back  to  the  first  word  of  the 
line  in  one  jump  from  the  fixation  point  of  the  last 
group  of  the  line  just  read.     If  the  line  should  con- 
sist of  four  long  words  of  about  equal  length,  the 
jumps  would  be  from  the  middle  of  each  word  to 
the  middle  of  the  next,  etc.     During  the  jump  it- 
self the  visual  consciousness  is  intermitted.     We 
see  nothing  (consciously,  at  any  rate),  while  the 
eye  is  actually  in  motion,  the  reading  of  this  sup- 
posed four  word  line  being  therefore  a  matter  of 
four  conscious  periods  interrupted  by  three  inter- 
vening periods  of  unconsciousness. 

Now  while  the  eye  is  consciously  reading  any  one 
of  the  four  groups  each  one  of  them  approximately 
one  quarter  of  the  line  long,  it  is  able  to  take  in 
visually  and  consciously  a  certain  number  of  words 
in  the  line  above,  the  line  below  and  in  the  lines 
above  and  below  them  respectively.  But  while  it 
is  possible  consciously  to  fixate  the  eye  on  one  let- 


184        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

ter  and  read  the  whole  word  which  contains  the 
letter  that  is  fixated,  and  also  a  word  above  it  and 
a  word  below  it,  it  is  not  actually  done  that  way  as 
a  general  rule  by  people  who  read  much.  Con- 
scious perception  is  confined  to  the  line  that  is 
being  actually  read  at  the  time,  and  while  the  scope 
of  conscious  vision  may  be  an  inch  from  left  to 
right,  it  is  not  generally  more  than  one-eighth  of  an 
inch  from  top  to  bottom  in  actual  reading.  Ex- 
perimentally I  can  fix  my  eye  on  the  word  of  in  the 
following  passage  and,  without  moving  my  eye,  con- 
sciously see  "  on  war.  Had ''  on  the  preceding 
line  "  League  of  Nations ''  on  the  fixated  line  and 
"  could  not "  on  the  line  below. 

terials  esseaitial   to  war.     To  the  end 
of  the  war  she  imported  iron  ore  from 
Sweden.     Until  almost  the  last  year  of 
the  war  she  drained  Holland,  Switzer- 
land, and  Scandinavia  of  concentrated 
foodstuffs.     Previous  to  their  own  en- 
try into  hostilities,  Rumania,  Bulgaria, 
and  Italy  sent  to  Grermany  enormous 
qualities    of   vital    supplies   which    she 
did  not  produce  in  suflScient  quantity 
to   carry   on   war.     Bad  the   Covenant 
of  the  League  of  Nations  been  in  force 
Germany  could  not  have  received  those 
supplies.     Germany    would    have    real- 
It  is  easy  to  see  that  this  remaining  unconscious 
of  the  words  in  the  preceding  and  the  following  line 
is  necessary  to  preserve  the  integrity  of  the  proper 
sequence  of  thought  in  reading.     For  consider  what 
would  be  the  result  of  the  confusion  of  three  lines 


THE  MECHANISMS  185 

in  the  case  of  the  reader  who  is  auditory  minded. 
Such  readers,  when  reading  silently  hear  the  words 
just  as  if  spoken  in  the  tone-quality  of  their  own 
voices,  or,  in  the  case  of  words  written  by  persons 
whose  voices  they  know,  in  the  tone-quality  of  those 
jjersons'  voices.  There  is  absolutely  no  difference 
between  the  two  qualities  of  sensation  except  in- 
tensity, the  mentally  heard  word  being  much 
fainter  and  unaccompanied  by  the  reality  feeling. 
Now  we  must  suppose  that  the  actual  sight  of 
the  word  groups  in  succession  causes  the  release 
of  processes  constituting  the  auditory  imagery  in 
the  consciousness  of  the  reader,  and  if  this  release 
worked  quite  impartially  as  far  as  the  actual  visual 
impressions  go,  the  auditory  imagery  of  three 
groups  of  words  would  be  released  into  conscious- 
ness, one  group  on  the  line  visually  fixated,  another 
on  the  one  above  it  and  the  third  on  the  line  beloAV 
it.  This  simultaneous  release  of  auditory  mental 
imagery  of  three  different  and  conflicting  groups 
of  sounds  would  be  exceedingly  confusing.  We 
have  therefore  trained  ourselves  to  become  oblivious 
to  those  of  the  uppermost  and  lowest  of  the  three 
lines.  We  have  in  a  sense  narrowed  our  conscious- 
ness by  learning  to  read.  Analogous  statements 
could  be  made  about  those  readers  who  are  in  the 
habit  of  supplementing  their  visual  reading  with 
imagery  of  the  voice  motor  sensations.  Indeed 
we  find  that  slightly  educated  persons  who  tend  to 
read  aloud  to  themselves,  or  who  move  their  lips 
in  reading  without  making  sounds,  are  sometimes 


186        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

in  the  habit  of  holding  a  finger  under  the  word 
group  being  read  as  if  the  better  to  focus  their 
vision  and  possibly  to  exclude  impressions  from 
word  groups  below. 

To  return  to  the  unconscious  perception  of 
visual  impressions  I  would  call  attention  to  the 
phenomenon  I  mentioned  at  the  beginning  of  this 
section,  and  for  which  the  preceding  paragraphs 
have  been  merely  introductory.  At  one  time  I  hap- 
pened to  observe  a  number  of  instances  where  words 
or  letters  from  a  line  or  two  or  three  lines  below 
where  I  was  consciously  reading  would  unite  in 
combinations  that  made  words  and  that  these 
words  would  spring  into  consciousness,  interrupt- 
ing the  sense  of  the  passage.^  Thus  in  a  passage  I 
was  reading,  the  word  "  insult  "  suddenly  appeared 
in  my  auditory  imagery,  interrupting  the  sense  of 
the  passage.  Being  then  curious  as  to  the  origin 
of  that  idea  which  was  quite  foreign  to  the  sense 
of  the  passage  I  quickly  looked  below  to  see  if  the 
writer  could  possibly  be  going  to  talk  about  insults. 
I  could  not  find  the  word.  It  w^as  not  on  the  page; 
but  I  did  find  "  in  "  in  the  next  line  and  "  suit  "  as 
a  part  of  the  word  "  consultation ''  in  the  line 
below  it.  The  word  insult  therefore  was,  and 
at  the  same  time  was  not,  on  the  page.  I  noticed 
this  unconscious  combination  of  letters  and  parts 
of  words  into  whole  words  unconnected  or  only 
remotely  connected  with  the  passage  being  read 
on   many   occasions   after  that  until   I  had  con- 

1  See  also  Wilfrid  Lay :  Mcm's  Unconscious  Conflict,  page  206. 


THE  MECHANISMS  187 

vinced  myself  of  the  fact  that  the  coalescence 
had  taken  place  in  the  unconscious  and  through 
the  unconscious  mental  activity  and  had  occurred 
with  such  clearness  and  force  that  it  had  of 
its  own  power  sprung  into  consciousness  and 
caused  an  interruption  of  the  train  of  thought  con- 
ditioned by  the  reading.  Then  I  ceased  to  notice 
these  unconscious  sensible  combinations.  I  did  not 
attempt  to  find  out  why  the  word  insult  should 
have  had  such  easy  access  to  my  conscious  thought. 
Possibly  I  may  have  been  touchy  at  the  time  and 
sensitive  about  what  some  one  had  said  to  me. 

Another  illustration  of  the  combination  of  im- 
pressions below  the  threshold  of  consciousness  is 
one  that  is  typical  of  a  group  of  such  experiences 
that  might  be  termed  unconscious  substitution. 

§  16.  The  Unconscious  Combination  of  Ideas 

I  sat  reading  one  summer  evening  in  an  old  cot- 
tage by  the  ocean.  I  had  my  fountain  pen  lying  on 
the  table  beside  my  book  to  make  an  occasional 
note.  The  table  cover  was  of  white  linen.  Much 
absorbed  in  what  I  was  reading,  I  yet  became  con- 
scious of  a  peculiar  odour.  My  first  thought  was 
that  the  dampness  of  the  atmosphere  at  the  time 
had  brought  out  some  old  musty  smell  from  the 
house.  Next  I  saw  that  in  moving  my  book  I  had 
rumpled  the  table  cloth,  and  a  fold  of  it  had  risen 
up  and  touched  the  point  of  my  pen  from  which  had 
been  drawn,  by  the  capillary  action  of  the  linen,  a 
spot  of  ink  the  size  of  a  dime.     Something  impelled 


18§        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

rae  to  put  my  nose  down  to  the  spot  and  snifiP  it. 
That  was  the  odour.  It  was  ink  I  had  been  smell- 
ing. I  was  vexed  with  myself  for  having,  through 
my  carelessness  in  laying  the  pen  down,  stained  the 
white  linen  table  cloth,  and  was  puzzled  that  I  had 
not  seen  it  touch  the  pen,  or  seen  the  spot  before  it 
grew  so  large,  but  the  fact  remains  that,  while 
the  spot  was  quite  large  enough  to  be  seen  while  I 
was  reading,  I  had  not  seen  it  until  I  smelled  it.  It 
was  quite  evident  to  me  that  the  spot  had  been  un- 
consciously seen  by  me  all  the  time,  but  that  the 
realization  of  its  presence  came  through  the  sense 
of  smell.  It  is  much  as  if  the  total  emotional  re- 
action had  been  like  another  person  trying  to  tell 
me  that  I  was  staining  the  cloth  by  my  careless  act, 
and,  failing  to  impress  my  vision,  had  tried  another 
avenue  of  sense.  The  idea  of  slight  damage  had 
been  present  in  my  unconscious  mind  for  some  time, 
through  both  the  senses  of  sight  and  smell,  had  been 
struggling  to  enter  consciousness  in  order  to  avert 
further  damage,  and  could  not  impress  me  visually ; 
but  had  succeeded  through  the  sense  of  smell  in 
diverting  my  attention  from  my  reading  and  arous- 
ing me  to  the  action  which  my  present  environment 
required  —  the  putting  of  the  pen  in  a  place  where 
it  would  not  spill  any  more  ink.  Unconsciously, 
therefore,  the  sense  of  smell  was  substituted  for 
that  of  sight  and  the  actions  were  linked  with  the 
former  which  would  ordinarily  have  been  associated 
with  the  latter.  The  whole  incident  was  entirely 
apart   from   any  conscious  volition   of  mine.     It 


THE  MECHANISMS  189 

seems  quite  clearly  to  show  a  state  of  mind  that  can- 
not be  called  anything  else  than  unconscious  voli- 
tion. But  it  surely  demonstrates  unconscious  per- 
ception and  reasoning.  The  perception  consisted 
of  the  association  of  one  sense  quality  with  another, 
which  was  shown  by  my  turning  my  gaze  from  book 
to  table  cloth,  and  by  the  connecting  of  the  odour  of 
the  ink  with  the  idea  of  something  peculiar  and  un- 
desirable. While  I  was  thinking  that  the  odour 
was  that  of  the  aged  timber,  plaster  and  wall  paper 
of  the  room  I  was  in,  I  was  still  reading.  The  im- 
pression of  a  peculiar  odour  came  several  times  be- 
fore I  looked  and  saw.  It  reminds  me  of  the  dumb 
show  of  excitement  of  a  dog  that  wants  human  aid 
in  some  emergency.  But  as  will  be  evident  there 
was  a  highly  complicated  process  going  on  in  my 
mind,  the  only  conscious  elements  of  which  were 
the  reading,  the  odour,  and  finally  the  conscious 
sight  of  the  ink  spot  some  time  after  it  had  become 
unconsciously  visible. 

§  IT.  Miracles 
The  greatest  miracles  are  the  commonest  occur-  V 
rences  of  every  day  life  such  as  these,  and  it  requires 
only  interest  and  close  attention  to  see  in  them  the 
extremely  complicated  interplay  of  one  sense  qual- 
ity with  the  others  and  their  connection  with  ac- 
tions carried  out  into  the  external  world.  One  is 
impressed  with  the  fact  that  there  is  nothing  in 
any  of  the  "  phenomena  "  of  spiritualism  any  more 
wonderful  than  almost  anything  that  takes  place 


190         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

around  us  or  in  us  every  day.  The  performance  of 
the  antennae  or  the  coherer  in  the  wireless  is  no 
less  remarkable  than  the  hypersensitivity  of  the 
medium  in  receiving  spirit  messages.  In  the  re- 
stricted sense  of  the  word  believe,  I  believe  in  both 
impartially ;  but  there  is  a  sort  of  universality  and 
ready  controllability  in  the  wireless  apparatus,  a 
systematization  such  that  any  boy  can  set  it  up,  if 
he  follows  definite  directions,  and  can  receive  mes- 
sages coming  from  hundreds  of  miles.  And  the  ap- 
parent contradiction  of  the  law  of  gravitation 
which  we  see  in  tacks,  iron  filings,  etc.,  rising  ver- 
tically from  the  earth  to  a  magnet  suspended  above 
them  is  no  less  wonderful  than  the  levitation  and 
other  materialization  phenomena.  The  difference 
is  only  the  rarity  of  the  latter,  should  the  latter  be 
scientifically  proved  real. 

There  is  enough  mystery  on  earth  and  in  life  and 
the  question  naturally  occurs  as  to  what  might  be 
the  cause  of  the  attention  of  some  men  and  women 
being  turned  from  the  here-and-now"  to  the  here- 
after. It  is  not  alone  that  more  excitement  is  se- 
cured, for  there  is  sufficiently  gripping  interest  in 
the  commonest  natural  phenomena  about  us.  The 
question  is  not :  "  Why  look  for  mystery?  "  for  the 
satisfaction  of  curiosity  is  perennially  demanded; 
but :  "  Why  choose  this  particular  field  for  exhibit- 
ing curiosity?  "  The  answer  will,  I  think,  be  made 
plain  4n  what  follows. 

We  get  the  impression  that  psychical  research 
is  going  after  the  rare  and  contradictory  per  se; 


THE  MECHANISMS  191 

and  that  the  well  known  facts  of  physics  are  not 
considered  of  sufficient  importance  to  have  deduced 
from  them  the  existence  of  an  intelligence  direct- 
ing and  planning  the  universe,  as  illustrated,  for 
example,  in  the  expansion  of  water  in  cooling  from 
4°  to  0°  centigrade.  But  what  the  psychical  re- 
searchers are  interested  in  is  things  much  rarer 
which  are  seized  upon  first  as  exceptions  to  the  uni- 
versal laws  of  nature. 

W.  McDougall,  President  of  the  English  Society 
for  Psychical  Research  says :  ^  "  It  is  the  organized 
attempt  to  apply  the  methods  of  science  to  these 
hoary  problems,  the  problem  of  supernormal  powers 
of  perception  and  communication,  the  problem  of 
modes  of  action  on  and  in  the  physical  world  not 
hitherto  recognized,  the  supreme  problem  of  the 
life  after  death." 

§  18.  Desire  for  the  Eootraordinary 

Thus  it  is  evident  that  the  exception  to  the  nor- 
mal or  average  has  for  a  certain  class  of  people  a 
disproportionate  interest  in  itself.  This  is  one  of 
the  many  methods  of  acquiring  or  at  any  rate  seem- 
ing to  acquire  an  amplification  of  the  ego.  The 
general  run  of  people  are  content  with  the  average 
dimensions  so  to  speak  of  their  individualities. 
Consciously  they  desire  to  increase  them  neither 
in  space  nor  time;  but  for  a  certain  type  of  people 
the  unconscious  craving  for  mere  extension  of  ego 
is  shown  in  their  conscious  interests  in  the  so-called 

1  l^ew  York  Evening  Post,  Oct.  30,  1920. 


192         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

marvels  of  spiritism.  They  feel  that  their  con- 
sciousness is  a  feature  of  their  existence  which, 
they  desire  beyond  all  things  to  feel  assured,  will 
remain,  after  all  the  physical  matter  composing 
their  bodies  has  been  dissipated ;  and  they  feel  that 
their  consciousness  is  the  more  satisfactory  if  it 
can,  in  clairvoyance,  crystal  gazing,  dowsing,  etc., 
extend  beyond  the  limits  of  the  ordinary  conscious- 
nesses which  they  see  about  them. 

In  this  we  see  that  the  extension  of  the  ego  is  but 
a  comparative  matter;  and,  if  we  were  all  clair- 
voyant and  telepathic,  these  people  would  have  to 
be  interested  not  in  the  common  phenomenon  of 
clairvoyance  but  in  some  rarer  manifestation. 
One  cannot  but  think  that  if  the  energies  devoted 
to  these  present  rarities  had  been  bestowed  upon 
the  research  into  the  nature  and  laws  of  manifesta- 
tion of  the  human  emotions  and  the  effects  of  these 
upon  health  and  conduct  and  morals,  we  should  be 
living  in  a  far  different  world.  For  as  yet  little 
is  scientifically  known,  compared  to  what  would 
be  necessary  for  a  really  rational  living  of  life, 
about  these  most  common  sensations,  common  to 
every  human  being  and  common  to  almost  every 
moment  of  his  or  her  life,  conscious  and  uncon- 
scious. 

On  the  other  hand  physics  and  chemistry  have 
taken  the  most  obvious  and  the  most  common 
things  and  have  devoted  attention  to  the  discovery 
of  the  universal  laws  according  to  which  they  act. 
One  cannot  help  being  impressed  by  the  very  di- 


THE  MECHANISMS  193 

vergent  aims  of  the  pure  and  applied  sciences  and 
of  psychical  research.  The  psychical  researchers' 
appreciation  of  this  divergence  is  shown  in  the  cry 
of  materialism  which  they  raise  against  science,  a 
criticism  expressed  in  the  term  of  spiritism,  which  "" 
implies  that  matter,  as  they  understand  it,  does  not 
come  up  to  their  expectations  as  they  conceive  them, 
of  what  matter  ought  to  be  capable  of,  or  of  what 
qualities  matter  ought,  as  they  think,  to  have. 

Their  implied  criticism  of  matter  contains  always 
the  unconscious  wish  that  at  least  some  matter  -^J 
might  be  peculiar  and  not  subject  to  the  laws  gov- 
erning the  rest  of  it.  And  as  will  be  elsewhere 
shown  a  wish  is  always  for  something  non-existent 
or  supposed  to  be  non-existent.  For  example  the 
w^onderful,  which  is  at  our  feet  and  in  the  air  we  \j 
breathe,  is  evidently  passed  ov^r  by  a  certain  type 
of  mind  and  something  radically  different  is  sought 
as  an  object  of  \^onder. 

§  19.  Desire  for  Excitement 

It  is  more  than  likely  that  besides  the  uncon- 
scious desire  for  the  amplification  of  the  ego  mani- 
fested in  all  spiritual  phenomena,  there  is  also  an 
additional  factor  in  the  unconscious  wish  for  ex- 
citement. The  ideational  content  of  spiritistic 
phenomena  is  nothing  if  not  exciting,  being  in  a 
sense  cataclysmic  in  its  apparent  denial,  now  of 
one,  now  of  another,  of  nature's  laws.  That  the 
ordinarily  invisible  should  become  visible,  the  un- 
heard heard,  and  that  the  material  body  should 


A 


194         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

have  a  spiritual  body  accompanying  it  and  all  the 
other  phenomena  of  spiritism  are  so  strikingly  at 
variance  with  average  experience,  as  to  belong 
really  to  that  class  of  ideas  known  as  newspaper 
stuff  —  the  strange,  odd,  freakish,  outre,  excessive, 
sensational. 

It  is  a  theory  of  psychoanalysis  that  all  excite- 
ment is  fundamentally  sexual  in  the  sense  that  men 
and  women  who  lack  the  normal  tensions  and  re- 
f)  laxations  in  that  sphere,  will  with  irresistible  im- 

pulse make  for  themselves  tensions  and  relaxations 
in  other  spheres.  The  close  coincidence  between 
the  abnormal  in  personality  and  the  medium  him- 
self would  almost  alone  suggest  this.  The  average 
human  couple  living  a  regular  and  normal  love-life 
show  very  little  tendency  as  a  general  thing  to  in- 
terest themselves  in  the  strange  or  the  sensational. 
Secure  in  their  mutual  love,  they  have  no  great  con- 
cern about  the  distant  or  the  future,  the  present 
in  time  or  place  filling  them  with  the  unutterable 
satisfaction  of  rhythmically  occurring  emotional 
tensions  and  relaxations,  wherein  their  sex  life  acts 
as  a  sort  of  gyroscope,  a  stabilizer  that  prevents 
them  from,  so  to  speak,  shooting  out  of  their 
spheres. 

But  when  one  of  the  couple  dies  or  is  untrue  to 
the  other  or  if  for  any  reason  the  true  mutuality 
of  their  love-life  is  diminished  it  is  quite  common 
for  one,  or  both,  if  both  survive,  to  develop  a  strong 
propensity  for  other  varieties  of  excitement,  which 
are  found,  to  be  sure,  in  many  spheres  of  human  ac- 


THE  Mi:OH/NISMS  195 

tivity,  but  for  a  certain  type  of  mind  nowhere  so 
certainly  as  in  the  various  forms  of  spiritism.  The 
unconscious  craving  too,  if  it  remains  strong  after 
the  average  days  of  human  love-life,  will  naturally 
seek  a  vicarious  outlet.  And  We  see  the  phe- 
nomenon of  many  a  man  and  woman  ridiculing  the 
idea  of  spiritism  in  their  earlier  life  and  in  later 
life  becoming  convinced  of  the  truth  of  spirit  rap- 
pings  and  other  unusual  things. 

§  20.  Transference 

In  this  chapter  I  have  tried  both  to  describe  the 
modes  or  processes  of  unconscious  mental  activity 
that  most  markedly  concern  the  problem  of  spirit- 
ism, and  to  show  that  the  universal  mechanism  of 
projection  has  for  its  inevitable  work  the  attribut- 
ing of  qualities,  like  those  possessed  by  the  uncon- 
scious thinker,  not  only  to  objects  around  him  but 
also  to  an  object  "  spirit "  which  has  no  existence 
that  can  be  proved  by  science.  I  have  traced  this 
projection  mechanism  from  its  most  elementary 
forms  in  the  primitive  belief  in  animism.  I  have 
mentioned  the  fact  that  introjection,  unconscious 
perception  and  unconscious  combination  of  ideas 
produce  results  that  enter  consciousness  with  a 
peculiar  persuasiveness,  and  not  being  attributable 
to  any  living  person,  they  will  naturally  be  at- 
tributed either  to  divinity  or  to  spirit.  I  have 
shown  that  the  desire  for  the  extraordinary  and  for 
the  excitement  which  the  extraordinary  produces  is 
an  important  factor  in  the  genesis  of  those  ideas 


196        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

leading  to  a  belief  in  spirits.  Another  potent 
factor  in  the  causation  of  these  ideas  is  transfer- 
ence. 

Transference  is  the  re-association  in  the  individ- 
ual's unconscious  mind  of  mental  states  that  are 
originally  associated  with  one  person  (father  or 
mother),  with  another  person.  The  individual  un- 
consciously transfers  his  own  mental  states  from 
one  person  to  another. 

The  mental  states  thus  transferred  include  both 
types  —  images  andjnternal  sensations.  External 
stimuli  cannot  be  included  because  they  do  not 
group  themselves.  Transferring  an  image  or  emo- 
tion from  one  individual  re-associating  in  his  own 
mind  that  image  or  emotion  with  the  other  person, 
or  more  properly  speaking,  with  the  ideas  held  by 
the  first  person  about  the  other.  Thus  the  emo- 
tions felt  in  infancy  toward  the  father  are  uncon- 
sciously transferred  to  the  psychoanalyst,  the  phy- 
sician, clergyman,  lawyer,  etc.  The  physician  or 
psychoanalyst  today  arouses  in  the  individual  the 
same  unconscious  feelings  and  ideas  that  the  father 
did  years  ago. 

In  spiritism  we  see  the  transfer  of  these  feelings 
to  the  medium.  In  infancy  the  father  was  re- 
garded as  omniscient  and  omnipotent.  If  the  me- 
dium has  received  in  later  years  this  transference, 
he  becomes  omnipotent  or  at  least  as  omnipotent  as 
the  reality  feeling  of  the  individual  will  allow  him 
to  be.  Thus,  whatever  powers  can  be  attributed 
to  the  medium,  over  and  above  those  possessed  by 


THE  MECHANISMS  197 

ordinary  people,  will  help  to  make  the  medium  om- 
nipotent in  the  eyes  of  the  individual.  In  order  to 
be  wholly  omnipotent,  he  would  have  to  be  able  to 
break  all  the  observed  laws  of  natural  phenomena. 
The  more  of  these  laws  he  can  break,  the  more  pow- 
erful he  becomes,  and  the  closer  he  approaches  to 
the  actually  omnipotent.  The  closer  he  approaches 
this  limit,  the  greater  the  individual's  satisfaction ; 
as  it  is  a  gratification  of  his  own  unconscious  wish 
both  to  be  omnipotent  and  to  partake  of  omnipo- 
tence. 

Therefore  the  spiritist's  aim  is  solely  to  collect 
these  breaks.  Every  so-called  proof  of  existence 
after  death  thus  feeds  both  the  unconscious  wish  of 
the  spiritist  to  be  omnipotent  and  strengthens  the 
transference  of  the  spiritist  to  the  medium,  thus 
reviving  in  the  spiritist  the  original  transference 
that  he  had  for  his  own  parent  when  he  was  an 
infant.  The  spiritist's  attitude  toAvard  the  medium 
is.  therefore  an  almost  exclusively  infantile  atti- 
tude, as  is  indeed  that  of  many  toward  their  heroes. 
We  have  here  the  apparent  paradox  of  a  person's 
feeding  his  unconscious  desire  to  be  himself  omni- 
potent, by  making  another  person,  the  medium,  om- 
nipotent. Even  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  in  referring  to 
the  "  privileged  persons  "  ^  who  are  allowed  to  be 
the  instruments  of  communication  of  the  messages 
from  the  departed,  shows  a  wholy  unscientific  rev- 
erence for  the  medium,  and  the  characteristically 
infantile  attitude. 

1  How  I  Know  the  Dead  Eaoist,  McClure's  Magazine,  Nov.,  1920. 


198        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

But  we  know  that  the  earliest  feelings  of  the 
infant,  even  before  the  father  has  become  the  em- 
bodiment of  omnipotence  for  him,  are  themselves 
feelings  of  absolute  omnipotence.  There  is  at  the 
earliest  stage  of  mental  development  nothing  in  the 
situation  of  any  infant  to  furnish  him  any  other 
ideas  than  that  he  possesses  all  the  power  in  the 
world.  He  has  but  to  utter  an  inarticulate  cry,  and 
to  him  come,  apparently  of  their  own  accord,  the 
gratifications  of  all  the  desires  that  he  has.  His 
internal  sensations,  if  he  is  a  healthy  baby,  are  all 
those  of  reiterated  satisfactions  of  wishes.  He  can 
do  everything  he  wants. 

If  in  later  years  his  greatest  desire  is  to  prove 
the  existence  of  life  after  death,  his  omnipotence 
is  complete  as  a  baby's  if  he  can  get  the  same  feel- 
ing of  satisfaction  from  the  thoughts  he  can  think 
about  this  problem.  It  is-  no  wonder  then  that  so 
many  men's  minds  show  this  trend  unconsciously 
even  if  consciously  they  deny  it.  Everything  in 
their  inner  life  tends  that  way,  and  it  is  hopeless 
to  stop  the  drift  of  it  all  except  by  means  of  the 
principle  of  reality  thinking  which  puts  a  stop  to 
dreaming  and  makes  an  effort  to  find  how  things 
really  are  related  to  each  other  in  the  universe. 

Thus  the  apparent  paradox  of  a  person's  attribut- 
ing omnipotence  to  another  person  in  order  to  gain 
the  same  himself  is  apparent  only.  Unconsciously 
the  spiritist  identifies  himself  with  the  medium; 
and,  the  identification  being  both  centripetal  and 
extrinsic,  he  identifies  the  medium  with  the  most 


THE  MECHANISMS  199 

omnipotent  being  he  conceived  of  in  Ms  infancy  — 
his  father. 

In  the  history  of  the  individual  spiritist,  the  de- 
velopment of  the  feeling  of  omnipotence  appears-  in 
three  stages.  First,  as  an  infant  he  feels  omnipo-  o^ 
tent  himself,  and  with  the  best  reasons  in  the  world. 
Second,  he  learns  there  are  limits  to  his  own  omni-  ^ 
potence,  as  he  has  one  disappointment  after  an- 
other, as  one  after  another  of  his  wishes  is  frus- 
trated. If  now  the  principle  of  reality  thinking 
gains  the  ascendancy  in  his  mind  —  an  extremely 
rare  happening,  making  the  actual  scientific  man  — 
he  enters  the  third  stage,  and  realizes  the  true  rela-  C 
tion  of  himself  to  the  external  world,  and  that  he 
and  it  are  governed  by  exactly  the  same  universal 
natural  law.  Otherwise  he  remains  intellectually 
an  infant.  The  fourth  stage  is  where  his  pleasure- 
thinking  overcomes  him  again,  and  he  reinterprets 
reality  according"  to  his  wishes  and  yields  little  by 
little,  as  even  great  scientists  have  done,  to  the  pres- 
sure of  the  unconscious.  He  sees  "  evidences  '^  of 
survival  naturally  at  the  time  of  his  life  when 
some  sort  of  survival  has  a  peculiar  desirability  in 
his  eyes,  and  in  directing  his  gaze  to  the  evidences 
he  averts  it  necessarily  from  the  facts  of  nature. 
Every  instance  when  natural  law,  collated  with  so 
much  energy  by  the  aid  of  the  reality  principle,  is 
broken  through  gives  him  one  more  bit  of  omni- 
potence, via  the  medium,  and  he  re-lives  as  far  as 
his  thought  mechanisms  go,  the  second  stage  of  his 
intellectual  development,  where  his  own  omnipo^ 


L 


200        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

tence  has  given  way  to  the  omnipotence  of  his  fa- 
ther. The  only  advance  he  can  then  make  in  this 
retrograde  re-living  is  to  attain  the  final  or  fifth 
stage,  which  is  identical  with  the  first,  his  com- 
plete intellectual  infancy  and  with  it  his  feeling 
of  absolute  omnipotence.  I  cannot  too  strongly 
emphasize  that  the  abandonment  of  the  reality  prin- 
ciple of  thought  is  the  first  step  leading  inevitably 
toward  second  childhood,  and  the  actions  of  men 
of  intellect  in  turning  toward  spiritism  is  an  un- 
failing indication  of  involution,  whereupon  they 
cease  to  be  scientists,  become  first  poets,  then  chil- 
dren and  finally  infants. 


CHAPTER  VI 

UNCONSCIOtJS   EMOTIONS  AND   WILL 

By  means  of  a  purely  intellectual  process  the  as- 
sociation experiments  of  Jung  develop  in  some  per- 
sons a  decided  emotional  conflict.  From  other  re- 
searches of  psychoanalysts  too  it  is  certain  that 
these  conflicts  are  in  the  unconscious  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  that  the  balance  of  power  on  one  side 
or  the  other  of  the  internal  and  unconscious  strug- 
gle is  the  determining  factor  in  the  individuars 
choice  of  an  occupation  for  his  vocation  or  for  his 
avocation. 

§  1.  The  Conflict-Split  Character 

Among  spiritists  we  find  those  who  make  it  their 
vocation  to  study  in  their  own  way  the  manifesta- 
tions of  the  unconscious  conflict  and  those  whose 
avocation  is  the  same  type  of  activity.  But  both 
are  showing  their  preoccupation  with  a  subject  that 
has  not  yet  received  from  science  corroboration  or 
authorization  as  a  subject  open  to  really  scientiflc 
study.  In  short,  they  are  studying  ostensibly  cer- 
tain phenomena;  but  psychoanalysis  is  convinced 
Miat  what  they  are  really  studying  is  their  own  con- 
flicts caused  by  their  death  complex. 

The  conflict-split  character  is  a  thing  in  itself, 
separate  entirely  from  the  situation  or  environment 

201 


202         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

in  which  it  may  be  placed.  For  the  character  or 
disposition  that  contains  an  innate  or  acquired  con- 
flict, or  lack  of  balance,  or  uneven  distribution  of 
strain,  there  is  naturally  no  external  cure.  Such 
a  character  is  really  worse  than  a  man  with  a 
broken  arm  or  leg  or  spine.  But  the  significant 
fact  is  that  ordinary  medical  examination  fails  to 
reveal  any  physical  defect.  The  muscles,  volun- 
tary and  involuntary,  in  such  an  individual  are 
tensed  in  such  a  way  that  they,  and  the  organs  they 
supply,  do  not  perform  their  functions  properly; 
but  the  tension  itself  comes  not  from  the  muscle 
but  from  the  brain  or  nerves  and  ultimately  from 
the  ideas  in  the  individual's  mind. 

If  an  idea  is  only  a  part  of  the  total  and  com- 
pletely inter-integrated  unitary  organism,  it  is  it- 
self part  of  the  effect  which  it  itself  causes.  It  is 
therefore  part  cause  and  part  effect,  and  partakes 
of  both  qualities  either  one  of  which  is  generally  re- 
garded as  logically  the  contradictory  of  the  other. 

§2.  The  Postural  Tonus 

The  name  technically  given  to  the  numerous 
nerve  impulses  sent  every  second  to  the  muscles, 
and  to  the  effect  produced  by  them  there,  is  the 
"  postural  tonus."  ^  It  is  the  postural  tonus  that 
keeps  one  sitting  or  standing  as  a  unit,  wrinkles 
the  brow  in  deep  thought,  diminishes  or  increases 
secretion  of  gastric  juice,  bile,  pancreatic  juice,  etc. 
A  redisposition  of  many  muscular  strains  takes 

iKempf:  The  Autonomic  Functions  and  the  Personality.    1918. 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     203 

place  at  any  sudden  change  in  the  environment  or 
at  any  greatly  different  idea  causing  a  deep  emo- 
tion. The  idea  causes  the  change  in  the  postural 
tonus  or  distribution  of  muscular  strains,  and  the 
conscious  or  unconscious  perception  of  a  part  of 
these  muscular  strains  constitutes  the  emotion  it-  / 
self.  ' 

All  emotions  are  not  the  perception  of  the  pos- 
tural tonus  and  all  postural  tonuses  do  not,  when 
perceived,  constitute  emotions.  An  emotion  is  the 
perception  of  a  change  in  the  postural  tonus  of 
such  an  extent  as  to  produce  an  effect.  But  the 
effect  need  not  be  one  that  enters  consciousness. 
The  effect  must  only  be  so  minimally  extensive  that 
by  some  means  it  may  later  be  known  to  have  taken 
place. 

Therefore   an  emotion  is  but  the  result  of  a 
change.     It  is  no  state  of  mind  or  body  or  both,  but 
is  the  dynamic  alteration  of  some  or  all  of  the  pos- 
tural tonuses  that  are  continuously  changing  in  the 
body.     It  is  admitted  that  the  body,  whether  awake  \ 
or  asleep,  is  never  without  postural  tonuses.     The      j 
only   human   body   without  postural   tonus  is   a     / 
corpse.     In  fact  the  animal  body  may  be  described  n^ 
at  any  time  as  the  algebraic  sum  of  its  postural     • 
tonuses,  just  as  an  atom  is  the  result  of  the  lines  of  . 
force  composing  it. 

It  would  thus  be  said  that  the  emotions,  if  they 
are  not  other  than  the  changes  of  strains,  must  be 
continuous  in  the  body.  This  indeed  they  are. 
Only  when  the  changes  become  extensive  enough 


204         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIKIT 

greatly  to  agitate  the  body  are  they  commonly 
called  emotions.  The  perception  of  the  change  is 
the  emotion.  Some  changes  are  not  great  enough 
to  cause  consciousness  to  awaken  or  if  awake  to 
turn  to  that  particular  part  of  the  body  where  the 
change  takes  place.  Other  changes  are  so  great  as 
to  awaken  it  or  narrow  it,  at  the  same^time  focus- 
sing conscious  attention  on  one  element  of  the 
thought  stream.  Some  are  small  and  sudden, 
others  are  great  and  slow.  The  change  in  the  pos- 
tural tonus  caused  by  a  sudden  increase  or  decrease 
in  the  barometric  pressure  is  recognizedly  emo- 
tional in  its  nature. 

§  3.  Emotion  a  Change  of  Relation 

An  emotion  is  either  a  perceived  or  an  unper- 
ceived  change  in  the  relation  between  the  external 
and  internal  ego.  By  far  the  greater  majority  of 
the  changes  in  this  relation  are  not  consciously  per- 
ceived. Any  change  of  relation  between  external 
environment  and  internal  disposition,  requiring  an 
adaptation  of  the  body,  and  there  are  few  which 
do  not,  immediately  causes  that  adaptation;  and 
only  when  the  adaptation  is  of  sufficient  grossness 
does  it  penetrate  into  consciousness  as  a  perception 
of  the  body  in  a  state  of  turmoil  (unpleasant)  or 
excitement  (pleasant).  The  adaptations  to  inter- 
nal and  external  conditions  made  by  the  blood,  the 
blood  vessels,  the  digestive  and  eliminative  func- 
tions are  all  included  in  the  general  adaptive  activ- 
ity of  the  body ;  but  generally  only  the  l^st  n^m^d^ 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     205 

enters  consciousness  to  the  extent  of  being  pre- 
pared for  in  advance,  voluntarily.  Even  this  is  an 
acquired  conscious  volition,  demanded,  as  are  all 
others,  by  our  being  members  of  society. 

As  the  adaptive  activity  is  universal,  perennial, 
ceaseless,  it  will  naturally  occur  that  every  activ- 
ity of  the  body  might  just  as  well  be  called  an  emo- 
tion as  any  other.  But  we  do  not  call  many  violent 
activities  emotions,  although  they  are  accompanied 
by  consciously  perceived  excitement  pervading  the 
entire  organism.  Ball  playing,  tennis,  boxing,  polo 
playing,  swimming,  rowing,  running,  etc.,  are  all 
violent  exertions ;  but  the  reason  they  are  not  called 
emotions,  although  they  are  highly  elaborated 
adaptations,  is  that  the  sensations  emanating  fron^ 
the  internal  organs  of  the  body  are  not  occupying 
the  centre  of  the  field  of  conscious  attention. 

The  unconscious  is  hugely  gratified  by  all  this 
stirring  life,  but  has  succeeded  for  the  moment  in 
engaging  the  attention  of  the  individual  upon  ex- 
ternals. While  the  inner  excitement  gained  by 
outer  activity  is  most  pleasurable  for  the  cave  man  -> 

within  us,  blindly  to  exercise  our  muscles  just  for  / 

pure  muscle  erotism  does  not  interest  conscious-  ^ 

ness.  So  we  invent  games  in  which  there  is  a  small 
amount  of  abstraction  to  occupy  consciousness  and 
make  a  compromise  with  the  excitement-loving  un- 
conscious, in  that  we  make  our  abstractions  apply 
to  large  movements  of  the  body  instead  of  to  infin- 
itesimal movements,  or  their  equivalent,  of  the 
brain  and  nerve  substance. 


206        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

The  sensations  emanating  from  the  internal  or- 
gans, heart,  lungs,  viscera,  stomach,  even  the  skin, 
are  much  more  noticeable  when  the  body  is  at  rest. 
V  Therefore  it  is  possible  that  a  person  leading  an 
inactive  life  will  lead  a  much  more  emotional  one, 
than  a  person  who  leads  an  active  life.  This  ap- 
plies to  a  life  that  uses  up  the  libido  in  outward 
activity,  such  as  that  of  a  day  labourer  or  farmer 
of  the  old  school.  There  are  many  occupations, 
such  as  that  of  the  sailor,  in  fine  weather,  where  the 
conditions  are  such  that  a  vigorous  physique  is  de- 
veloped and  is  left  without  adequate  outlet,  and 
with  many  hours  of  enforced  idleness,  wherein  the 
emotions,  or  sensations  from  certain  parts  of  the 
body  itself,  become  unduly  prominent. 

From  this  point  of  view^  the  doctrine  of  the  Stoics 
that  emotions  are  diseases  is  easily  appreciated. 
They  are  more  reasonably  called  diseases  if  they  are 
not  the  subsidiary  accompaniment  of  an  activity 
directed  toward  the  external  world,  but  are  the 
object  of  direct  voluntary  attention. 

The  emotions  that  are  repressed,  or  dammed 
back,  are  distinctly  not  merely  subsidiary  concom- 
itants of  outgoing  activity  but  are  the  centre  of 
conscious  attention,  for  a  while  at  least,  and  are 
then  choked  down,  and  put  out  of  consciousness; 
that  is,  they  have  to  be  attended  to  in  order  to  be 
dammed  back. 

We  may  profitably  consider  the  conditions  in 
which  emotions  themselves  become  the  centre  of 
conscious  attention.     Natural  animal  reaction  is 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL      207 

an  external  reaction  in  most  animals  except  those 
that  feign  death  to  escape  an  enemy;  and  in  the 
opposite  situation,  namely  of  sex  activity,  the  ac- 
tions are  universally  physical  embracing  the  entire 
physique  of  the  animal.  In  the  animal  world  the 
only  restraint  laid  upon  reaction  to  environment 
comes  from  without,  and  in  the  shape  of  fear  in- 
spired by  present  or  anticipated  injury. 

§  4.  Repression 

In  the  human  race  restraint  is  similarly  initiated 
though  not  carried  out  in  the  same  manner  in  every 
case.  We  may  easily  imagine  a  situation  in  which 
a  child  is  forced  by  circumstances  to  repress  its 
activity  that  constitutes  the  instinctive  reaction  to 
an  unpleasing  environment.  He  tries  to  run  away, 
but  is  held  back.  He  tries  to  strike  the  object  un- 
pleasing to  him,  but  is  held  fast  by  a  stronger  child 
or  adult.  In  this  situation  struggling  gives  him  a 
partial  relief  but  not  a  wholly  satisfactory  one. 

We  may  also  easily  imagine  an  individual  so 
constituted  as  to  react  not  outwardly  but  in- 
wardly. He  will  be  praised  for  it,  very  early  in 
life.  He  will  be  such  a  good  little  boy  and  no 
trouble  to  any  one.  And  he  may  grow  up  into  such 
a  good  little  man,  that  he  will  make  the  finest  kind 
of  tool  for  the  constitutional  trouble-maker  to  use 
for  his  own  purposes. 

But  here,  as  ever,  the  advantage  to  society  is  a 
disadvantage  to  the  individual,  though  we  might 
see  in  the  multiplication  of  such  individuals  a  de- 


208        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

terioration  of  society  itself.  'Everything  points  to 
the  detrimental  nature  of  any  repression  of  emo- 
tion whatsoever.  If  we  cannot  express  ourselves 
because  of  the  squeamishness  of  our  social  environ- 
ment, so  much  the  worse  for  it.  The  strength  of  a 
fabric  is  measured  by  what  it  can  stand.  The 
wholesomeness  of  social  relations  is  detracted  from 
by  the  inability  to  hear  a  man  or  woman  give  vent 
to  their  feelings  within  reasonable  limits.  But 
the  sensitive  type  of  people,  who  identify  them- 
selves vividly  with  others,  those  of  the  artistic  tem- 
\  perament  are  likely  to  restrain  themselves  too 
much.  Hear  what  Ludwig  Frank  ^  says  in  his 
Affektstorungen  about  the  neurotic  type: 

"  Through  their  increased  memory  capacity  they 
also  have  the  ability  easily  to  reproduce,  with  the 
original   emotional    tone,    what    they    have    lived 
through.     In   social  life   such   people  are   distin- 
guished for  their  vivacity;  they  are  easily  trans- 
ported by  the  stories  of  others,  still  more,  for  ex- 
ample, by  their  own  special  favourite  literature  and 
by  the  theatre.     Furthermore,  they  are  enabled,  by 
relating  their  own  experiences  and  the  emotions 
released,  to  interest  or  even  transport  other  people. 
/It  is  generally  the  lively  and  ingenious  persons  in 
/      society,  with  many-sided,  especially  artistic,  inter- 
ests, who  very  soon  make  an  impression  by  their 
\      engaging  manners.     They  are  not  the  ordinary  peo- 
^^    pie  with  the  herd  instinct.     The  interesting  qual- 
ity of  their  minds  stamps  them  as  having  the  artis- 

1  A  Freudian  of  Zurich. 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     209 

tic  nature.     All  psychoneurotics  are  either  them- 
selves artists  or  dilettantes  or  they  have  a  special 
understanding  in  every  sphere  of  art.     This  is  ren- 
dered possible  by  the  intensity  of  their  emotional 
life.  ...  If  such  people  remain  healthy  —  for  hap- 
pily in  only  a  small  number  of  people  so  disposed 
is  a  psychoneurosis  reached  —  they  have  an  ex-  •>. 
traordinary  importance  for  their  fellow-men.     For    j 
they  understand  how  to  get  enjoyment  out  of  life    i 
in  a  very  high  degree,  and  to  beautify  it  for  others."  / 

§  5.  Repression  and  Conflict 

An  act  that  has  to  be  carried  out  by  a  person  who 
is  virtually  a  mechanism  half  or  more  than  half,  of 
which  is  operating  against,  or  not  entirely  with  the 
rest  of  it,  is  an  act  that  is  associated  with  unpleas- 
ant emotions.  The  unpleasant  emotions  are  the 
organic  reactions,  whether  sub-perceived  or  apper- 
ceived,  and  the  organic  reactions  have  various  ef- 
fects upon  the  physical  mechanism.  One  of  these 
effects  is  the  increase  of  the  supply  of  jidrenalin 
sent  to  the  blood,  another  the  increase  of  glycogen. 
Other  effects  are  correlative  with  these  such  as  the 
exudation,  and  the  closing  of  the  ducts  supplying 
moisture  to  the  mouth  and  throat.  Blushing  is  an- 
other organic  reaction  clearly  connected  with  ideas. 
The  organic  reactions  need  not  be  situated  or  show 
themselves  in  the  face  or  in  the  intestinal  organs 
solely.     They  exist  everywhere  in  the  body. 

The  functioning  of  the  entire  mind  and  body  as 
a  whole,  whose  integrity  has  never  been  impaired 


210        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

in  harmoniousness,  is  a  phenomenon  seen  only  in 
the  young  —  in  infants  and  in  very  young  children. 
In  them,  if  they  be  not  organically  defective  to  start 
with,  each  act  is  accompanied  by  the  ideas  and 
emotions  that  have  evolved  as  the  inevitable  result 
of  millennia  of  evolution.  The  only  thing  that  can 
stop  a  perfectly  harmonious  continuation  of  this 
interplay  of  parts  of  the  organism  as  a  totality  is 
some  unfortunate  experience.  What  is  unfortu- 
nate varies  with  the  complexity  of  the  organism. 
A  crab  may  lose  a  claw  and  grow  another;  a  man 
losing  an  arm  remains  not  only  physically  but 
jmentally  one  armed. 

/  The  perfectly  harmonious  functioning  of  the  body 
ceases  when  the  reactions  naturally  caused  by  the 
environment  are  in  some  way  blocked.  Among  the 
blocked  processes  are  the  emotions,  some  of  which 
in  every  civilized  adult  are  thus  inhibited.  The  in- 
hibited emotions  or  those  whose  expression  is 
blocked  become  unconscious  emotions.  That  they 
cease  being  emotions  by  virtue  of  being  blocked  is 
only  another  way  of  saying  they  are  turned  from 
conscious  into  unconscious  emotions.  Their  status 
as  unconscious  emotions,  while  being  admitted  by 
some,  is  on  technical  grounds  denied. 

"  Unless  an  unconscious  excitation  or  wish  suc- 
ceeds in  getting  the  thing-ideas  representing  it 
translated  into  word-ideas  (but  not  necessarily  into 
actual  words),  or,  to  express  it  differently,  unless 
in  the  foreconscious  the  word-memory  residues  are 
activated  which  correspond  to  the  unconscious  idea- 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     211 

tional  representatives  of  the  wish,  it  remains  an 
unconscious  or  repressed  one.  Its  energy  develops 
neither  affects,  nor  movement." 

"  There  are  no  unconscious  affects.  One  often 
speaks,  to  be  sure,  of  unconscious  affects  (love, 
hate,  guilt,  resentment,  etc. )  and  this  usage,  though 
not  strictly  correct,  is  a  legitimate  clinical  con- 
venience. An  affect  is  really  a  conscious  sensory 
perception  of  a  bodily  state.  Without  conscious- 
ness it  does  not  exist.  When  we  speak  of  an 
unconscious  affect  we  mean  either  that  the  affect 
is  really  developed  and  therefore  conscious,  though 
attached  to  some  other  ideas  than  those  originally 
representing  it,  or  else  we  mean  merely  a  poten- 
tiality of  its  development  —  the  tensions  of  the  Un- 
conscious that  might  develop  as  affects  of  hate,  love, 
etc.,  if  released  from  foreconscious  inhibition."  ^ 

In  this  and  similar  passages  there  is  implied  a 
real  though  latent  (unconscious)  wish-energy  con- 
nected in  the  unconscious  with  ideas  which  never 
emerge  into  consciousness.  The  fact,  however,  that 
a  wish  can,  indeed  every  wish  does,  produce  a  sen- 
sory perception  does  not  seem  to  some  persons  to 
suggest  that  an  internal  sensation  may  exist  with- 
out causing  a  coenesthetic  perception.  The  so- 
called  common  sensations,  hunger,  thirst,  lust,  diz- 
ziness, nausea,  etc.,  are  just  as  truly  the  effect  of 
physical  stimuli  of  the  peripheral  sensory  or- 
gans situated  in  different  parts  of  the  body  as  the 
actual    conscious    affects    or    emotions    are    the 

iFrink:  Morlid  Fears  mid  Compulsions,  page  145. 


212        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

"  conscious  sensory  perception  of  a  bodily  state." 
If  there  must  be  a  physical  basis  for  a  wish,  and 
if  that  wish  is  entering  consciousness  in  more  or  less 
disguised  form  every  hour  of  the  day,  there  must 
also  be  a  physical  basis  for  emotions,  quite  as 
much  when  they  are  not,  as  when  they  are,  in  con- 
sciousness. If  these  states  of  the  body  are  not  con- 
sciously perceived  every  hour  of  the  day,  their  not 
being  perceived  is  no  proof  of  their  non-existence. 
Therefore  saying  that  "  there  are  really  no  con- 
scious affects  "  (emotions)  is  no  more  denying  the 
existence  of  their  physical  substrate  when  they  do 
not  exist  in  consciousness  than  saying  a  wish  does 
not  enter  consciousness  in  its  original  form  denies 
the  existence,  in  the  unconscious,  of  that  original 
form. 

And  if  emotions  do  not  continuously  appear  in 
consciousness,  there  is  no  more  reason  to  suppose 
that  their  physical  substrate  does  not  exist  in  the 
body  in  the  interim  between  their  several  mani- 
festations than  there  is  reason  to  suppose  that  the 
original  wish  idea  which  is  kept  securely  locked 
in  the  unconscious,  does  not  exist  in  a  very  definite 
form  which  by  means  of  the  appropriate  psycho- 
analytic technique  may  be  evoked  and  live  in  con- 
sciousness. 

§  6.  Emotion  Unceasing 

An  emotion  therefore  is  a  part  of  the  total  re- 
/  action  of  the  organism  to  its  environment.  It  is  a 
i      never-ending  reaction.     We  have  no  more  reason  to 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL      213 

say  that  any  part  of  the  body  is  at  any  time  en- 
tirely without  change  than  we  have  to  say  that  the 
heart  does  not  beat  during  sleep. 

A  conscious  emotion  is  only  a  part  of  the  total 
reaction  of  the  organism  to  the  environment.  It  is 
only  a  part  simply  because  for  ages  man  has  singled 
out  certain  parts  of  the  reaction  that  were  per-  ^ 
ceptible  to  him  and  has  given  them  this  name.  The 
emotional  reaction  is  only  a  part  of  the  total  re- 
action simply  because  there  have,  in  the  history  of 
mankind,  been  reasons  for  singling  out  certain  por- 
tions of  the  total  reaction.  The  reasons  are  that 
these  portions  were  strikingly  associated  with  the 
other  senses  of  sight,  sound,  etc.  How  man  felt  to 
himself  when  he  w^as  terribly  excited,  has  always 
been  a  strong  sensation,  and  likewise  how  other  peo- 
ple looked,  sounded  and  "  touched  "  or  "  felt "  to 
him,  when  he  was  not  excited  and  they  were,  and 
also  when  he  was  excited  as  well  as  they.  These 
are  all  different  groups  of  qualities  of  conscious- 
ness. From  a  purely  objective  point  of  view  there 
is  no  reason  for  picking  out  one  set  of  organic  re- 
actions to  the  total  mental  and  physical  situation 
and  calling  it  an  emotion,  except  its  strikingness 
and  the  resultant  desire  to  talk  about  it. 

History  has  shown  that  men  have  done  little 
of  value  with  the  emotions.  Early  in  the  history  of 
systematic  thought  the  Stoics  came  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  emotions  were  diseases  or  sufferings 
and  that  name  in  Greek  (patheia)  was  given  to 
them.     The  Stoic  discipline  was  purposed  to  school 


214        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

men  out  of  this  suffering,  much  as  Christian  Sci- 
ence today  attempts  to  annul  diseases.  The  Stoics 
aimed  at  the  opposite  of  patheia^  which  is  apatheia 
(apathy)  or  absence  of  suffering. 

Thus  an  important  group  of  thinkers  early  made 
a  study,  according  to  their  opportunities,  of  the 
group  of  organic  reactions  now  called  emotions,  but 
then  called  sufferings,  and  later  passions  (which  is 
the  Latin  equivalent  for  patheia)  ;  and  came  to  a 
conclusion  concerning  them  analogous,  in  some  re- 
spects, to  the  dicta  of  the  Christian  Scientists. 
"  You  should  annihilate  your  emotions,"  said  the 
Stoics,  "  because  they  are  never  good  but  only  ill.'' 
"  You  must  verbally  annihilate  disease  by  a  per- 
petual negative  affirmation  that  disease  is  a  nega- 
tion, because  it  is  not  health,  and  therefore  does 
not  exist,"  say  the  Christian  Scientists. 

Neither  the  Stoics  with  their  repression,  nor  the 
Christian  Scientists  with  their  negative  affirmation 
both  touching  partial  reactions  of  the  organism  to 
its  total  environment,  saw  the  truth  in  full.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  in  this  connection  what  a  mod- 
ern psychology  of  the  unconscious  has  discovered 
about  the  people  who  do  now  what  the  Stoics  were 
advised  to  do  2500  years  ago.  The  person  who  re- 
presses his  emotions,  gains  a  control  over  certain 
functions  of  his  body,  certain  glands  (for  example 
the  tear  glands  and  others)  and  the  muscular  con- 
trol over  the  face,  a  control  which  is  exactly  con- 
trary to  the  natural  working  of  these  parts.  In  a 
sense  he  thus  gives  a  permanent  twist  to  his  psy- 


\ 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL      215 

chophysical  organism.  What  even  a  twisted  or-  j 
ganism  can  accomplish  is  a  wonder.  In  trees  it  is  j 
even  a  picturesque  quality. 

What  the  twist  in  the  personality  accomplished 
by  stoicism  did  for  the  individual  was  to  make  him 
more  adaptable  to  the  purposes  of  the  state,  as  it 
restrained  his  activity  so  that  it  should  not  be  in- 
jurious to  other  individuals,  this  being  one  of  the 
aims  of  society.  , 

§  7.  Emotion  and  Health 
In  health  the  proper  functioning  of  the  various 
bodily  organs  generally  does  not  enter  conscious- 
ness directly.  Some  people  glory  in  the  fact  that 
they  never  know  they  have  a  stomach  except  when 
they  are  hungry.  But  the  indirect  results  of  the 
well-working  organs  appear  in  consciousness  as  the 
emotional  tone  of  the  day's  experiences.  A  dys- 
peptic teacher  will  not  see  the  pupils  as  they  are 
but  as  little  devils.  And  even  the  children  suspect 
that  the  psychic  atmosphere  of  the  school  room  that 
results  from  the  gastric  disturbance  is  due  to  the 
teacher's  not  feeling  well.  The  bodily  changes  in 
hunger,  rage,  and  fear  have  been  so  well  described 
by  Cannon  that  it  is  unnecessary  to  more  than  re- 
fer to  them  here.  Is  the  fear  the  result  of  the  ^. 
bodily  change  or  does  the  bodily  change  cause  the 
fear? 

Psychoanalytic  research  has  shown  that  a  fear 
may  have  various  and  far-reaching  physical  as  well 
as  mental  results  and  that  the  fear  in  question  is 


216         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

not  proven  to  be  of  other  than  psychic  origin. 
Furthermore  a  specific  fear  such  as  that  of  dogs, 
tunnels,  snakes,  thunderstorms,  open  places,  closed 
places,  etc.,  may  be  only  a  conscious  phase  of  an 
unconscious  fear  that  concerns  something  far  more 
intimate  than  what  appears  on  the  surface.  The 
actual  thing  consciously  feared  is  almost  never  an 
adequate  cause  for  the  amount  of  emotion  evoked. 
The  fear  of  the  patient  must  really  be  of  something 
far  more  vital.  The  fear  of  thunderstorms  is  ut- 
terly disproportionate  to  the  amount  of  emotion 
that  would  be  commensurate  with  the  facts  of  mor- 
tality in  thunderstorms  as  shown  by  the  theory  of 
probabilities.  It  is  as  if  the  unconscious  had  to 
have  for  its  own  satisfaction  an  approximate 
amount  of  internal  excitement,  and,  failing  to  get 
that  out  of  the  ordinary  run  of  human  experience 
fixed  upon  some  more  or  less  frequently  occurring 
phenomenon.  Similarly  the  psychical  researchers, 
each  and  every  one  of  them,  have  failed  to  get  out 
of  life  the  normal  emotional  reaction  and  have  de- 
voted their  energy  toward  consciously  carrying  out 
measures  to  still  their  unconscious  fears. 

§  8.  Fear 

Freud  points  out  that  for  the  individual  the 
prime  fearsome  experience  is  the  very  act  of  being 
born,  and  that  Macduff  was  without  fear  because 
he  was  not  naturally  born  of  woman,  but  from  his 
"  mother's  womb  untimely  ripp'd."  Should  we  call 
this  fear  implanted  in  mankind  at  birth,  a  physical 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     217 

or  a  mental  fear?  As  the  majority  of  humans  are 
naturally  born  and  yet  develop  some  fear  attached 
haphazard  to  various  human  experiences  we  should 
have  to  say  that  it  is  mental  fear,  or  fear  of  having 
an  exclusively  psychic  origin.  And  yet  it  is  a  fear 
that  is  caused  at  a  time  when  the  individual  has 
never  been  fully  conscious.  It  is  a  fear  that  in  its 
origin  is  and,  in  later  existence  remains,  uncon- 
scious, a  generic  apprehensiveness  attachable  after- 
ward to  any  sort  of  experience  whatever,  whether 
such  experience  is  objectively  dangerous  or  not. 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  how  many  are  the  really 
dangerous  situations  that  do  not  cause  the  least 
fear  in  men  and  women!  The  ravages  of  certain 
diseases  according  to  the  absolute  objective  facts 
of  their  mortality,  should,  if  humans  reasoned 
logically,  be  the  object  of  the  most  active  fear  and 
be  attacked  with  relentless  energy.  But  either  the 
collective  unconscious  of  the  communities  or  races 
decimated  by  these  diseases  gets  a  satisfaction  out 
of  the  excitement  caused  by  them  or  the  conscious 
mentality  of  the  groups  is  not  logical  or  clear 
enough  to  see  the  connection.  Only  at  some  distant 
time  in  the  future  when  the  conscious  minds  of 
men  and  women  reckon  with  the  unconscious,  will 
the  multitudinous  specific  fears  be  recognized  as 
illogical  and  steps  taken  to  remove  as  far  as  pos- 
sible from  the  external  situation  the  really  danger- 
ous factors. 

Among  the  dangerous  factors  of  the  present  day 
psychical  and  physical  situation  the  most  danger- 


218        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

ous  of  all  is  the  ignorance,  and  the  unwillingness 

/  of  men  to  become  cognizant,  of  the  part  that  is 

played  by  the  unconscious  in  the  every  day  life  of 

\  humanity,  both  normal  and  abnormal  men.  This 
ignorance  is  natural  enough  on  account  of  the  com- 
paratively recent  discovery  of  the  main  facts.  The 
unwillingness  to  become  aware  of  the  function  of 
tlie  uhconscious  is  due  to  quite  other  causes. 
The  greatest  of  these  is  the  apparently  unpleasant 
nature  of  the  concept,  which  is  that  of  an  almost 
unlimited  power,  misdirected  and  at  first  glance 
seeming  immoral,  or  at  least  unmoral,  and  incon- 
gruous with  the  aims  of  society  as  generally  under- 
stood, in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  perversion  of  this 
power  is  not  its  only  possible  employment.  It  can 
just  as  well  be  socially  used  as  asocially  deflected 
from  the  external  world  to  the  internal  world  of 
the  individual.  Just  now  the  world  is  suffering 
from  a  too  great  release  of  energy  begun  in  the 
world  war,  and  not  yet  directed  into  channels  of 

%  usefulness  to  humanity  at  large. 

§  9.  Will 

To  some  person  "  unconscious  will  "  is  only  a 
misnomer  because  they  consider  that  the  act  of  will- 
ing, in  the  only  possible  way  in  which  it  could  be 
regarded  as  free  will,  must  be  conscious.  Con- 
scious will  alone  implies  an  individual  personality 
that  can  deliberate  for  the  ego  and  make  free  ra- 
tional choice,  or  come  to  a  decision  as  to  what  con- 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     219 

stitutes  alternatives.  In  this  respect  we  grant  all 
that  is  required  by  the  advocates  of  free  will.  As 
far  as  consciousness  is  concerned  there  must  be 
only  conscious  mental  activity,  and  it  would  be  in- 
consistent and  contradictory  to  speak  of  an  uncon- 
scious will. 

The  will  is  free  to  choose  between  two  ideas,  but 
it  is  not  directly  free  to  choose  what  ideas  shall  be 
presented.  It  may,  for  example,  occur  to  me  to  go 
to  one  place  or  to  another,  and  I  exercise  my  free- 
dom of  conscious  will  in  picking  which  place  to 
go.  But  why  were  these  two  of  the  many  places 
I  might  go  offered  to  my  conscious  mind  by  my 
unconscious  mind?  That  is  a  matter  which  does 
not  come  within  the  scope  of  my  conscious  freedom 
of  will. 

In  this  respect  I,  as  a  totality  of  conscious  and 
unconscious  activities  am  not  at  present  a  free 
agent  if  ever  I  was  at  any  time.  I  may  approach 
freedom  as  a  limit,  mathematically  speaking,  if  I 
begin  now  to  take  my  unconscious  in  hand  and  train 
it  to  utter  its  wealth  of  mental  resources  more 
freely.  The  repression  of  such  vast  mental  mate 
rial  into  the  unconscious  of  every  person  is  what 
really  prevents  his  will  from  being  free.  His  will 
is  bound  only  because  his  mind  is  not  free,  because 
it  is,  in  other  words,  so  largely  unconscious.  The 
differences  in  men  and  women  in  this  respect  are 
easily  observable.  Not  the  effusive  talker,  nor  yet 
the  insistent  worker  along  one  line,  is  the  freest, 


220        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

but  that  individual  whose  physical  and  mental  ac- 
tivities have  the  widest  scope,  the  fewest  inhibitions 
both  conscious  and  unconscious. 

§  10.  Will  and  Emotion 

The  clearest  possible  illustration  of  the  uncon- 
scious mental  activity  is  furnished  by  the  cases  in 
which  a  person  is  going  about  his  business  in  the 
routine  way  and  suddenly  faces  an  unexpected  sit- 
uation for  which  he  is  prepared  neither  by  mental 
training  nor  by  experience.  He  becomes  discon- 
certed and  does  some  foolish  thing.  "  Conscious- 
ness/' to  use  the  words  of  Angell,^  "  cannot  in- 
stantly adapt  itself  to  the  new  situation  and  in  the 
meantime  the  motor  energy  overflows  in  what  we 
call  the  expressions  of  emotion."  He  has  described 
the  expressions  of  emotion  ( on  p.  321 )  as  follows : 
"  The  moment  the  stimulus  takes  on  an  emotional 
hue,  however,  as  we  have  just  seen,  the  guidance 
of  consciousness  is  more  or  less  abridged."  This 
illustrates  the  difference  between  the  point  of  view 
of  mental  life  as  consciousness  only,  and  as  both 
conscious  and  unconscious  together.  When  the 
guidance  of  consciousness  is  abridged,  what  hap- 
pens is  the  entrance  into  consciousness  of  a  mass 
of  organic  sensations  that  were  in  the  unconscious 
just  before. 

Angell  goes  on  to  say  that  "  the  only  alternative 
is  an  overflow  of  the  nervous  currents  into  the  in- 
voluntary pathways  and  the  instinctive  hereditary 

1  Psychology,  page  322. 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     221 

pathways  of  the  voluntary  system."  But  from  the 
analytic  point  of  view  it  seems  that  what  happens 
here  is  not  an  overflow  of  conscious  activity  into) 
involuntary  (unconscious)  pathways,  but  an  irrup- 
tion of  what  before  were  unconscious  perceptions, 
an  irruption  of  these  unconscious  factors  into  con- 
sciousness, a  sudden  activation  of  processes  that 
had  just  before  been  quiescent,  or  latent. 

Further  he  says,  "  Any  situation  is  emotional  in 
which  an  impediment  to  the  ongoing  activity  is  en- 
countered so  serious  as  to  break  up  the  progress  of      0--^ 
the  consciously  directed  co-ordinations  occurring  at 
the  moment.'' 

This  is  another  example  of  a  merely  one-sided 
view.  Any  situation  is  emotional  which  arouses 
the  internal  sensation  to  such  a  pitch  that  although 
ordinarily  they  are  outside  of  or  below  conscious- 
ness, now,  at  these  special  times,  they  force  them- 
selves upon  consciousness,  breaking  down  all  bars 
which  consciousness  (and  conscious  psychology) 
have  erected  against  them.  Of  course  "  breaking 
up  the  progress  of  the  consciously  directed  co- 
ordinations occurring  at  the  moment "  is  a  nasty 
thing  to  do,  particularly  if  one  is  gripping  tight  the 
narrow  seat  of  consciousness  and  expecting  it  to 
control  everything  in  sight,  which  would  indeed  be 
a  foolish  expectation. 

Angell  continues  the  same  sentence;  (an  impedi- 
ment to  the  ongoing  activity  is  encountered)  "  of  a 
character  requiring  a  definitely  new  adaptive  re- 
action of  consciousness  in  order  to  surmount  it." 


222         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

According  to  current  psychology  the  "  ongoing  ac- 
tivity "  is  exclusively  consciousness,  no  recognition 
being  made  of  the  unconscious  perception  feeling 
and  willing  going  on  simultaneously  and  constitu- 
ting by  far  the  most  extensive  field  of  mental  action. 
The  notion,  too,  that  "  a  definitely  new  adaptive  re- 
action of  consciousness ''  is  requisite,  is  evidently 
purely  a  one-sided  view.  No  reaction  can  be  con- 
scious. The  reaction  is  a  fact  of  the  unconscious 
mentality  and  a  part  of  it  enters  consciousness  and 
never  or  rarely  all  of  the  reaction.  On  the  other 
hand  the  mind-body  combination,  regardless  of  con- 
sciousness or  unconsciousness,  is  adaptively  react- 
ing all  the  time  whether  we  wake  or  sleep.  Some 
of  these  processes  or  movements  enter  conscious- 
ness, others  do  not. 

He  practically  admits  as  much  in  his  next  sen- 
tence :  "  The  case  represents  in  a  way  the  very  con- 
ditions under  which  we  found  consciousness  first 
coming  to  light  "  (in  the  evolution  of  animate  life) . 
Consciousness  is  the  attainment  of  a  certain  degree 
of  complexity  of  organization. 

"  Consciousness  cannot  instantly  adapt  itself  to 
the  new  situation,  and  in  the  meantime  the  motor 
energy  overflows  in  what  we  call  the  expressions  of 
emotion."  This  would  be  restated,  with  the  uncon- 
scious activity  in  view,  in  some  such  way  as  that 
consciousness  does  not  need  to  adapt  itself  in- 
stantly to  any  new  situation  as  the  adaptation  is 
the  work  of  the  unconscious  largely.  In  fact  on 
occasions  of  violent  emotion  consciousness  is  so 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     223 

completely  occupied  with  organic  sensations  or 
with  some  special  external  sense  that  the  rest  of 
the  visual,  auditory  and  other  qualities  are  ex- 
cluded from  consciousness  and  make  such  slight  im- 
pressions that  the  memory  of  them  is  generally 
permanently  an  unconscious  memory.  At  such 
times  a  narrowing  of  the  visual  and  auditory  con- 
sciousness takes  place  which  results  in  something 
like  a  veil  being  drawn  over  the  emotional  episode, 
or  over  a  part  of  the  visual,  auditory,  tactual,  etc., 
impressions.  By  the  "  instinctive  hereditary  path- 
ways of  the  voluntary  system  "  being  thus  over- 
flowed by  the  emotion  he  evidently  means  just  what 
I  have  called  the  internal  sensations. 

The  fact  that  this  internal  sensation  irradiates 
along  the  pathways  of  the  voluntary  system,  which 
at  the  time  are  deprived  of  conscious  control,  sug- 
gests two  important  considerations.  The  first  is 
that  the  so-called  voluntary  muscles  are  not  always 
under  voluntary  control,  that  is,  they  are  some- 
times, as  in  strong  emotions,  under  the  control,  if  it 
may  be  called  control,  of  the  unconscious.  The  sec- 
ond is  that  the  emotion  itself  is  much  more  uncon- 
scious than  conscious,  no  matter  how  strong  it  may 
be.  The  stronger  it  is,  the  more  vivid  the  light 
which  is  focussed,  not  on  the  diversity  of  sources  of 
feeling,  which  are  exceedingly  numerous,  but  chiefly 
on  some  one  sense  element  of  sight  or  sound  or 
touch,  which  for  a  brief  time  looms  so  large  in  con- 
sciousness as  to  obscure  all  other  sensations. 

It  is  only  as  the  Internal  disturbance  dies  down 


224         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

that  one  usually  recalls  the  physical  elements  that 
composed  it.  Whatever  actions  may  have  been  per- 
formed are  recalled  only  later,  if  at  all.  Activity 
was  almost  entirely  unconscious  at  the  time  of  the 
greatest  intensity  of  emotion,  and  it  is  frequently 
either  completely  forgotten  or  the  memories  of  it 
are  hopelessly  distorted.  This  is  proved  by  the  un- 
reliability of  the  testimony  of  excited  witnesses. 
Only  the  unemotional  observer  can  recall  correctly 
the  details  of  any  incident  causing  great  emotion 
in  the  persons  most  concerned.  Those  most  excited 
are  most  unconscious  and  have  least  free  will. 
Their  actions  are  under  the  control  of  that  part  of 
their  personality  —  their  unconscious  —  which  is 
not  directly  subject  to  the  will. 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  unconscious  comprises 
so  large,  and  consciousness  so  small,  a  part  of  the 
entire  personality,  of  the  individual,  it  is  thus  clear 
why  we  are  only  to  a  very  slight  degree  interested 
in  the  freedom  of  the  will  and  why  unconscious 
volition  is  not  a  topic  to  be  treated  at  great  length 
under  this  title.  As  libido  it  would  fill  a  library 
of  volumes. 

§  11.  Images  and  Will 
i  have  called  the  conscious  voluntary  visual  rep- 
resentation a  visual  mental  image.  I  might  thus 
speak  of  images  as  auditory,  olfactory,  gustatory, 
cutaneous  and  thermal,  kinesthetic  and  organic 
sense  qualities.  There  are  some  who  deny  the  ex- 
istence of  these  separate  representations  but  those 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     225 

who  have  observed  them  in  themselves,  or  believe 
they  have,  are  united  on  the  possibility  of  having 
all  these  types  of  imagery  in  consciousness,  with 
the  possible  exception  of  organic  and  pain  and 
pleasure. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  auditory  impressions  are 
spontaneously  represented  to  consciousness,  in 
other  words  that  there  are  auditory  "memory 
images  "  and  they  come  without  any  feeling  what- 
soever of  being  willed,  desired  or  wished  for.  It 
is  one  of  the  commonest  of  occurrences  to  have  a 
tune  "  running  through  "  one's  head.  These  tunes 
come  of  their  own  accord,  and  while  they  may,  ap- 
parently, be  voluntarily  continued  and  varied,  their 
actual  presence  at  the  time  of  their  first  coming 
cannot  be  accounted  for  as  an  act  of  will. 

This  fact  suggests  that  visual,  olfactory,  and 
other  classes  of  images  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
quite  as  much  beyond  voluntary  recall  as  are  the 
spontaneously  occurring  tunes  I  have  just  men- 
tioned. And  if  the  other  classes  of  images  are  be- 
yond voluntary  recall,  surely  the  images  of  internal 
sensations,  if  such  exist,  as  some  believe,  must  be 
quite  as  spontaneous.  If,  furthermore,  we  realize 
that  the  internal  sensations  are  always  presenta- 
tions whenever  they  enter  consciousness,  it  is  nec- 
essary to  admit  that  they  are  no  more  subject  to 
the  will,  in  the  ordinary  sense,  than  any  other  pre- 
sentation. 

Remembering,  however,  that  will  is  itself  the  per- 
ception of  an  internal  sensation,  we  realize  that  a 


-t 


226         MAN^S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

voluntary  recall  of  an  idea  (representation)  is  bnt 
the  occurrence  of  that  idea,  in  association  with  the 
volitional  feeling,  and  that  the  recalling  of  an  emo- 
tion voluntarily  would  be  only  the  spontaneous  oc- 
currence of  that  emotion,  accompanied  by  the  feel- 
ing of  having  willed  it,  which  is  itself  a  spontane- 
ous internal  sensation.  So,  too,  would  the  image  of 
an  emotion,  if  the  term  be  allowed,  and  the  thing 
believed  as  possible,  be  but  the  spontaneous  emer- 
gence of  the  representation  of  the  emotion,  accom- 
panied also  by  the  volitional  feeling,  or  internal 
sensation  which  is  the  unconscious  basis  of  it. 

§  12.  Recalling  a  Name 

Possibly  the  part  which  volition  plays  in  evoking 
these  various  representations  may  be  clearer  if  we 
take  the  illustration  of  trying  to  recall  a  name. 
In  this  instance  it  is  as  if  we  were  trying  to  fill  a 
hole  with  something  which  w^ould  just  fit  it.  Fur- 
thermore it  is  very  much  like  filling  a  hole  we  can- 
not see,  for  if  we  could  see  it,  we  should  see  its 
shape,  and  seeing  the  shape  of  the  holes  the  letters 
would  fit  into  would  be  as  easy  as  reading  a  name 
in  a  stencil.  But  while  we  cannot  see  this  stencil, 
we  are  immediately  aware  of  the  fact,  when  the 
letters  of  the  stencil  which  we  cannot  see,  are  filled 
with  the  letters  we  can  see.  This  is  a  very  extraor- 
dinary situation,  and  makes  it  quite  evident  that 
the  kno\\ledge  of  the  filling  out  of  these  letters 
must  be  gained  from  a  sense  other  than  sight.  Or 
we  could  say  the  same  thing  about  sound.     If  the 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     227 

actual  name  were  not  written  or  printed  eacli  time, 
but  spoken  by  ourselves  or  some  one  else,  there 
would  still  be  the  sense  of  sameness,  which  is  no 
part  of  the  auditory  quality,  but  is  a  sensation  of 
another  quality,  and  the  same  sense  as  operated  in 
connection  with  the  visual  sensations. 

When  I  wish  to  recall  the  name  of  another  per- 
son who  has  done  or  said  some  special  thing  or  been 
seen  by  me  on  some  special  occasion,  I  begin  run- 
ning over  several  names  in  my  mind,  particularly 
those  beginning  with  a  certain  letter,  which  I  think 
is  the  initial  of  the  required  name.  Not  infre- 
quently I  am  mistaken  in  this.  I  go  over  name 
after  name,  the  words  coming  at  will  (i.  e.,  accom- 
panied by  a  feeling  of  volition)  until  they  stop 
coming.  Then  there  is  an  awkward  pause.  I  feel 
at  a  loss.  As  far  as  names  go,  my  mind  is  a  blank. 
Then,  if  after  a  minute  or  two  of  blankness  another 
name  occurs  to  me,  I  feel  that  it  has  come  of  its  own 
accord,  and  although  I  was  trying  to  think  of  the 
name  Parker,  Preston  appeared.  How  much  was 
Preston  recalled  at  will?  Not  at  all.  I  was  exert- 
ing all  the  will-power  I  had  in  order  to  recall 
Parker.  I  was  not  willing  Preston  at  all.  Can 
Preston  truly  be  said  to  have  come  through  any  vol- 
untary effort  on  my  part?  No  more  can  Parker, 
^  even  though  it  comes  as  the  next  name. 
(J'f^v^  When  then  can  I  be  said  to  be  willing?  Names 
in  general  that  begin  with  P.  But  if  I  have  been 
honest  with  myself,  and  have  put  down  on  paper 
or  have  spoken  out  all  the  names  and  all  the  ideas 


228        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

which  have  come  into  my  mind,  I  must  confess  that 
other  names  than  those  beginning  with  P  have  oc- 
curred to  me,  also  other  thoughts  than  mere  names 
I  have  selected.  I  have,  as  it  were,  shut  my  eyes 
or  my  lips  to  all  names  beginning  with  any  other  let- 
ter, and  to  all  other  mental  occurrences  not  names, 
in  spite  of  which  some  did  nevertheless  leak 
through. 

This  narrowing  of  consciousness  for  selective 
purposes  blinds  us  to  what  is  going  on  in  the  part 
of  the  mind  screened  out  by  our  name-selecting 
mechanism.  But  this  takes  place  in  every  kind  of 
directed  thinking,  which  is  merely  selected  think- 
ing, screened,  bolted,  sifted,  sieved,  with  a  fine  wire 
gauze  netting,  adjusted  to  the  exact  size  of  what 
we  want  to  cull  out  of  sense  experience  in  general 
or  out  of  its  representations  or  mental  imagery. 

In  this  recalling-of-a-name  situation  we  are  sit- 
ting with  a  screen,  this  time  in  the  shape  of  a  sten- 
cil, in  our  hands,  and  are  waiting  until  some  name 
shall  come  along  that  fits  exactly.  But  this  implies 
a  greater  willingness  than  usual  to  allow  names  to 
fly  through  our  heads.  In  being  thus  disposed  to 
entertain  names  at  random  we  are  opening  our  con- 
scious mind  to  a  flood  of  representations  which 
emerge  from  the  unconscious.  At  these  times  we 
open  the  gates  wider  to  ideas  and  feelings  from  the 
unconscious,  and  the  ideas  and  feelings  come  in 
infinite  numbers,  and,  for  the  time  being,  we  take 
those  that  fit  our  special  stencil,  and  ignore  all  the 
rest.     But  if  we  knew  how  to  observe,  compare  and 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     229 

study  the  rest,  we  should  be  learning  something 
about  the  contents  of  the  unconscious. 

We  are  thus  both  opening  and  closing  our  mind 
at  the  same  time, —  opening  it  to  allow  the  flow  of 
more  representations  through  it  than  we  generally 
allow,  and  in  a  sense  closing  it  to  avoid  looking  at, 
or  becoming  aware  of,  almost  all  that  we  have  other- 
wise admitted.  We  admit  such  ideas  into  con- 
sciousness in  a  sort  of  negative  way,  dismissing 
them  at  once  if  they  do  not  fulfil  a  certain  require- 
ment. If  one  of  them  does  fulfil  it,  we  accept  it  at 
once  and  dismiss  its  entire  train  of  followers. 

While  this  is  of  course  most  business-like  and 
most  practical  from  the  point  of  view  of  finding  the 
name  Parker,  it  very  much  resembles  antiquated 
methods  of  manufacture  where  80  per  cent,  to  90 
per  cent,  of  the  raw  product  was  thrown  away  to 
clutter  the  earth  or  pollute  streams.  But  as  mod- 
ern industrial  economics  progresses,  we  find  some 
use  for  more  and  more  of  the  by-products. 

Kegarding  the  series  of  names  of  people  begin- 
ning with  P  as  raw  material  out  of  which  I  wished 
to  extract  only  the  name  Parker  to  keep,  and  fling 
a  hundred  away,  I  can  regard  in  turn  all  names  be- 
ginning with  P  as  the  material  that  is  to  be  ex- 
tracted from  a  still  greater  raw  material,  say  fam- 
ily names  in  general.  I  recall  all  the  family  names 
I  can,  and  keep  only  those  beginning  with  P.  Or 
I  can  enlarge  my  scope  still  farther  and,  allowing 
all  sorts  of  representations  to  come  to  my  conscious- 
ness, record  only  such  of  them  as  are  family  names. 


a. 


230        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

Finally  I  can  remove  all  restrictions  whatever, 
and  write,  if  I  can  write  fast  enough,  or  tell  some 
other  person,  or  even  silently  review,  any  and  all 
ideas  which  come  to  consciousness.  In  this  posi- 
/tion  of  having  removed  all  selective  machinery  from 
my  mind  I  am  in  a  position  of  observing  the  "  free 
associations''  by  the  psychoanalytic  method  of 
mental  investigation. 

If  it  is  said  that  when  we  are  looking  for  the 
name  Parker  and  cannot  find  it,  we  are  surely  will- 
ing Parker,  and  the  same  for  names  beginning  with 
P,  with  family  names  in  general  and  so  on  till  we 
get  to  the  free  associations  utterly  unrestricted,  it 
might  be  asked  what  it  was  that  caused  us  to  will 
to  remember  the  name  Parker. 

It  was  evidently  some  special  value  that  Parker 
had  for  us  at  that  particular  time, —  a  special  value 
that  made  us  want  it  or  wish  for  it  above  all  other 
names,  and  quite  unconnected  with  the  familiar 
wishing  for  things  just  because  at  the  time  we  have 
them  not. 

The  special  wish  value  that  is  possessed  by  a 
name,  even  when  it  is  out  of  consciousness  is  an  ex- 
ceedingly peculiar  thing.  Contradictory  as  it  may 
appear,  the  name  Parker,  which  we  were  wishing 
for,  is  for  a  time  kept  out  of  consciousness  by  the 
fact  that  there  is  behind  it  a  strong  wish  against  its 
coming  into  consciousness. 

This  shows  quite  clearly  how  we  are  at  variance 
with  ourselves  even  when  we  are  trying  to  recall  a 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL      231 

name.     Curiously  we  wish  the  name  but  it  is  not 
forthcoming.     Unconsciously  there  is  a  strong  force  "" 
dragging  the  name  into  oblivion,  a  force  which  we        '-^ 
consciously  oppose,  at  the  same  time  getting  the 
feeling  of  willing,  which  is  due  to  the  opposition  set 
up  by  the  unconscious. 

This  condition  of  being  at  variance  with  ourselves  o 
constitutes  what  has  been  called  the  unconscious 
conflict. ,  In  this  case  it  is  only  partly  unconscious. 
The  struggle  to  recover  the  name  Parker  is  quite 
conscious,  as  are  all  the  means  employed  to  drag 
the  name  from  oblivion.  But  we  are  fishing  with 
lines  let  dow^n  into  the  invisible  depths  of  the  soul, 
baiting  our  hooks  and  waiting  for  whatever  name- 
fishes  may  bite  and  be  hauled  up.  The  amount  of 
"volition"  is  just  the  number  of  internal  sensa- 
tions associated  with  the  amount  of  fish-line  that 
we  put  out  and  the  number  of  times  we  do  it. 

What  we  catch  is  in  no  sense  to  be  called  the 
effect  of  our  conscious  volition,  but  it  is  the  effect  of  ^ 
what  might  be  called  an  unconscious  volition.  The 
two  are  ostensibly  very  different,  although  there  is 
no  reason  to  believe  that  they  are  not  essentially 
the  same,  with  the  exception  that  one  of  them  does 
not  appear  above  the  horizon  and  come  into  con- 
sciousness. 

Save  in  extensiveness  or  expansiveness  the  sense 
of  volition  or  feeling  of  willing  is  no  other  than  the 
internal  sensation  concomitant  with  a  wish  or  de- 
sire.    It  occurs  both  in  consciousness  and  in  the 


232        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

unconscious,  whence  it  sometimes  does  and  some- 
times does  not,  manifest  itself  in  literal  or  in  sym- 
bolic forms. 

§  13.  Freedom  of  the  Will 

When  people  disagree  about  whether  or  not  the 
human  will  is  free,  they  disagree  only  because  they 
do  not  see  that  consciously  the  will  is  free  in  that 
we  know  what  we  are  doing,  though  we  do  not  know 
all  of  its  significance ;  but  if  freedom  of  the  will  de- 
pends on  a  choice  of  what  ideas  are  behind  the 
walled  action,  the  will  is  not  free  in  the  same 
sense,  for  we  have  no  direct  conscious  control  over 
what  ideas  shall  come  into  the  mind. 

One  would  naturally  say  that  unconsciously  the 
will  is  not  free,  or  that  the  unconscious  will  is  not 
free,  because  it  is  without  the  control  of  the  con- 
scious mind,  and  this  is  in  a  sense  true.  So  when, 
we  argue  about  the  freedom  of  the  will,  it  should  be 
asked :  Do  you  mean  conscious  will  or  do  you  mean 
unconscious  trends? 

§  14.  The  Unconscious  Will 

The  unconscious  processes,  movements,  repre- 
sentations are  all  directed  toward  consciousness 
and  attain  that  proximity  to  consciousness  depend- 
ent upon  the  amount  of  activation  energy  which 
they  represent.  This  activation  energy  is  what 
might  be  called  the  unconscious  w^ill,  and  is  gen- 
erally to  be  regarded  as  a  will  to  expression,  or  a 
wish   to  be  expressed,   in  conscious  thought, —  a 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     233 

wish  that  is  gratified  in  some  cases  only  to  the  ex- 
tent that  it  becomes  an  overt  action,  although  that 
action  may  be  one  which  does  not  enter  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  person  making  it,  an  example 
being  any  unconscious  mannerism,  such  as  biting 
lips,  various  pursings  of  them,  twisting  of  hands, 
etc. 

The  removal  of  all  restrictions  upon  thought  is  a 
difficult  task  for  most  persons,  and  for  a  number  of 
reasons.  First  it  is  considered  by  some  a  waste  of 
time,  by  others  meaningless,  by  still  others,  who  are 
mentally  timorous,  a  terrifying  experience,  for  they 
may  happen  to  come  upon  thoughts  of  death,  and 
representations  of  funerals  and  corpses  and  coffins 
and  graveyards.  Others,  too,  if  they  let  themselves 
think  in  this  unrestricted  manner,  would  find  many 
unhappy  thoughts  coming  into  their  consciousness, 
thoughts  of  disappointments,  of  chagrin,  of  hate  or 
animosity  against  others,  and  some  individuals 
would  have  a  sense  of  guilt  aroused  in  them  by  im- 
aginations of  a  sensual  character  which  would 
arouse  desires  they  fear  to  gratify. 

Indeed,  I  believe  that  fear  is  the  main  reason  that  \ 
prevents  most  men  from  looking  thus  at  their  own  j 
unconscious  minds,  from  letting  many  thoughts 
come  into  consciousness  at  all.  I  am  sure  that  an 
instinctive  fear  prevented  me  from  going  deeper 
into  my  own  unconscious,  until  I  realized  that  it 
was  just  like  any  one's  else  and  by  knowing  mine 
I  could  the  more  readily  account  for  the  other  fel- 
low's. 


234         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

I  am  not  recommending  to  all  persons  without 
exception  this  procedure  of  admitting  to  conscious- 
ness and  recording  the  multitudinous  thoughts  in- 
carnadine that  throng  the  unconscious  stream,  if 
the  ordinary  weirs  be  removed  for  a  short  time; 
although  I  believe  that  such  a  procedure  would,  in 
many  cases,  be  followed  by  salutary  results.  The 
thoughts  that  enter  through  these  opened  gates 
which  most  men  keep  locked  and  barred  are  real 
thoughts,  no  matter  how  seldom  they  are  allowed 
through.  They  are  working  parts  of  the  mental 
mechanism,  even  though  as  invisible  as  the  works 
of  a  watch. 

I  offer,  however,  the  suggestion  that  in  one  sense 
we  are  all  required,  for  our  own  peace  of  mind,  to 
know  something  about  this  mental  mechanism  that 
is  out  of  sight,  because  not  only  are  we  forced  our- 
selves to  repair  it  and  adjust  it,  if  it  requires  repair 
or  adjustment,  but  there  are  practically  no  mental 
watchmakers  to  do  it  for  us,  if  we  should  desire  it. 
As  I  believe,  every  clergyman,  teacher,  physician 
or  employer  of  large  numbers  of  men  ought  to  be 
able  to  examine  in  this  way  and  advise  their  parish- 
ioners, pupils,  patients  and  employes,  but  it  is  no- 
torious that  most  of  them  do  not,  simply  because 
they  do  not  realize  the  importance  of  this  generally 
neglected  part  of  the  mental  machine.  If  the  watch 
tells  the  time  reasonably  well,  they  use  it,  otherwise 
they  throw  it  away.  But  it  is  an  economic  waste  of 
vast  proportion  to  reject  the  mental  timepieces  that 
do  not  mark  time  in  the  conYentional  manner.. 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     235 

In  the  study  of  spiritualistic  phenomena,  how- 
ever, this  research  into  the  unconscious  is  abso- 
lutely imperative.  For,  as  stated  before,  we  can- 
not pretend  to  make  any  true  statements  about 
something  of  which  we  know  little  or  nothing.  We 
cannot  know  anything  adequate  about  spirit  apart 
from  body  until  we  know  something  about  spirit 
during  its  residence  in  the  body ;  and  I  submit  that 
such  knowledge  is  at  present  in  a  most  elementary 
stage  of  its  development  and  that  it  is  above  all 
things  premature  to  say  that  any  statement  about  a 
spirit  apart  from  the  body  has  any  scientific  value 
whatever. 

In  another  section  I  shall  try  to  show  how  im- 
possible it  is  to  say  we  know  about  disembodied 
spirit  without  a  fuller  knowledge  of  the  uncon- 
scious than  we  have  at  present,  and  I  shall  offer 
what  I  consider  to  be  an  absolute  essential  to  sci- 
entific research  along  spiritistic  lines,  namely  the 
thorough  analysis  both  of  medium  and  of  observers. 

§  15.  Summary 

Having  defined  an  act  as  a  voluntary  movement 
or  connected  group  of  movements,  it  becomes  nec- 
essary to  give  a  meaning  to  the  word  voluntary. 
An  act  is  that  movement  with  which  is  associated  a 
presentation  consisting  of  an  organic  feeling  of  de- 
sire involving  a  gratification  of  some  egocentric 
wish.  The  act  is  called  voluntary  if  it  is  accom- 
panied by  that  organic  sensation;  it  is  called  in- 
voluntary, if  it  is  not.     That  is  the  only  difference.. 


236        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

What  we  most  energetically  will  to  do  is  what  we 
•conceive  and  that  is  at  the  same  time  supported  by 
the  organic  sensations  constituting  desire.  Where 
this  supporting  desire  is  absent,  the  act  can  in  no 
sense  be  called  voluntary. 

It  is  quite  customary  to  speak  of  doing  what  we 
do  not  desire  to  do,  and  that  through  sheer  force 
of  will.  But  it  is  inaccurate  to  speak  thus.  For 
in  doing  what  we  dislike  or  even  fear  to  do,  there 
is  a  strong  conflict  between  two  conscious  desires 
and  probably  many  more  unconscious  ones.  But 
that  desire,  which  causes  us  to  do  what  we  do,  is 
dynamically  the  stronger  of  the  two,  and  the  con- 
scious aim,  as  against  the  conscious  or  unconscious 
wishes  opposing  it,  is  for  a  greater  good  than  could 
be  attained  by  following  the  path  of  so-called  desire, 
as  opposed  to  sheer  will. 

In  the  sense  of  a  power  unsupported  by  desire, 
will  has  no  significance.  The  only  reason  one  does 
not  continue  to  make  effort  for  an  object  is  because 
desire  for  it  fails.  If  one  desires  something  as  for 
instance  a  girl  whom  fate  has  given  to  another  or 
quite  taken  away,  and  the  desire  for  that  girl  con- 
tinues, it  is  not  rationally  a  desire  for  something 
that  exists,  but  for  something  that  does  not,  and 
there  results  here  a  situation  which  is  naturally 
solved  by  the  desire  attaching  itself  to  something 
else.  If  the  man  cannot  really  have  the  woman  on 
whom  he  has  set  his  heart,  he  can  set  it  upon  some 
other  woman  or  for  ever  rend  himself  with  ungrati- 
fied  desires. 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     237 

The  total  inability  to  adapt  to  changing  circum- 
stances like  these,  it  may  be  remarked  in  passing, 
is  the  characteristic  of  those  who  suffer  from  a  fixa- 
tion of  libido  on  infantile  objects,  in  men  usually 
the  mother  or  mother  imago.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  a  very  great  adaptation  must  be  made,  in  cases 
like  this,  but  it  is  within  the  power  of  the  average 
human  that  does  not  have  such  fixation,  to  make 
the  adaptation,  some  in  a  short  time,  others  in  a 
longer.  Those  who  make  it  in  too  short  a  time  are 
called  unsteady  or  fickle,  although  some  kinds  of 
fickleness  are  due  to  another  cause. 

§  16.  Telepathy 

Taking  any  of  the  phenomena  of  spiritism,  e.  g., 
telepathy,  where  an  idea  in  the  shape  of  a  mental 
image  of  sight,  sound,  touch,  etc.,  appears  in  my 
conscious  life,  and  is  of  such  a  nature  that  I  can- 
not explain  how  it  came  there  through  ordinary 
conscious  perception,  it  is  evidently  much  more  in 
the  spirit  of  the  principle  of  parsimony  to  explain 
it  as  a  production  of  my  own  mind,  not  my  con- 
scious mind,  but  the  unconscious  or  subconscious 
mind.  Certainly  it  is  not  truly  scientific  to  invoke 
for  peculiar  mental  circumstances  an  explanation 
that  is  far  more  elaborate  and  roundabout  than 
necessary.  Therefore  it  will  have  to  be  repeatedly 
emphasized  that  the  scientist's  first  duty  is  to  ex- 
plain the  apparently  exceptional  phenomenon  of 
telepathy  in  any  of  its  forms,  for  example,  as  merely 
the  transformation  of  an  unconscious  trend  into  a 


238        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIKIT 

conscious  idea,  the  message  to  my  conscious  life 
from  a  part  of  me  that  is  and  always  will  remain 
almost  totally  unconscious.  The  fact  later  to  be 
discussed,  namely  that  in  thus  emerging  from  the 
unconscious  to  consciousness,  an  idea,  which  in  its 
former  state  exists  as  an  indefinite  craving  and  in 
the  latter  as  a  definite  specific  wish,  suffers  a  "  sea 
change  into  something  rich  and  strange  " —  the  fact 
of  this  transformation  will  account  for  a  great  deal, 
that  is  otherwise  unaccountable,  entering  conscious- 
ness. 

And  here  it  may  be  remarked  that  the  familiar 
argument  that  the  so-called  super-normal  informa- 
tion is  due  to  mere  chance  is  far  more  potent  when 
we  have  taken  the  unconscious  into  account  than  it 
ever  has  been  before.     It  is  the  commonest  argu- 
ment of  the  psychical  researcher,  that  the  informa-" 
tion  which  is  gained  by  telepathy,  or  by  any  .form  ; 
of  spirit  communication  is  much  more  remarkable 
than  could  possibly  be  subjectively  guessed  on  the 
theory  of  probabilities.     This  information,  he  says, 
could  not  possibly  have  been  guessed  or  divined  or  / 
otherwise  subjectively  evolved  by  the  person  into 
whose  consciousness  it  comes.     This  impossibility 
would  mean  that  all  the  combinations  and  permuta- 
tions of  all  former  experiences,  sensations,  percep- 
tions, etc.,  on  my  part  would  never  give  me  the  ma- 
terial to  make  the  combinations  of  ideas  constitut- 
ing the  message  in  question.     Possibly  not,  if  we 
take  into  account  only  those  mental  states  of  which 
we  have  been  conscious  from  the  date  of  our  birth 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     239 

onward.  But  when  we  consider  the  innumerable 
perceptions  external  and  internal  we  have  had  dur- 
ing our  entire  lives  of  which  we  have  not  been  con- 
scious, but  which  yet  remain  in  the  almost  infinite 
storehouse  of  our  individual  unconscious,  we  shall 
clearly  see  that  from  the  merely  mathematical  point 
of  view  of  the  theory  of  probabilities  alone,  the 
chances  are  at  least  tenfold  greater  that  the  mes- 
^ge  is  but  a  message  from  our  own  unconscious 
to  our  conscious  life,  and  that  until  this  chance  is 
absolutely  removed  by  means  of  laboratory  methods 
comprising  the  strictest  scientific  control,  we  shall 
not  have  fulfilled  the  most  rigorous  requirements 
of  science. 

And  it  will  be  noted  that  in  this  book  the  dis- 
tinction is  consistently  made  between  what  is  sci- 
entifically known  to  be  a  fact  and  what  is  believed 
or  (otherwise  expressed  only)  desired  or  feared. 
The  strictness  of  scientific  proof  requires  us  to  ac- 
cept as  fact  not  what  has  been  only  observed  and 
testified  to  by  witnesses  under  oath  but  what  has 
been  so  described  and  formulated  that  any  other 
person  or  persons  can  produce  the  same  phenomena 
who  has  the  same  material. 

This  requires  us  to  preface  all  our  inquiries  by  a 
consideration  of  two  distinctions  (1)  that  between 
belief  and  knowledge  and  (2)  that  between  the  two 
phases  of  conscious  phenomena  which  Freud  has 
discussed  under  the  titles  of  reality  principle  and 
the  pleasure-pain  principle.  As  I  purpose  to  take 
up  the  matter  of  belief  and  knowledge  in  a  separate 


240        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIEIT 

chapter  (VII)  I  will  here  present  that  of  Pleasure- 
Pain  and  Reality.  According  to  the  reality  princi- 
ple all  true  scientific  research  proceeds,  and  I  think 
I  shall  be  able  to  show  that  all  psychical  research 
proceeds,  upon  the  pleasure-pain  principle. 

§  17.  Pleasure-Pain  vs.  Reality  Principle 

Briefly  stated  the  pleasure-pain  principle  is  that 
according  to  which  all  ideas  occur  to  the  mind 
when  they  are  not  regulated  or  controlled  by  the 
reality  principle  which  is  a  much  later  evolution  of 
the  human  intelligence.  The  latter,  for  example, 
changed  astrology  into  astronomy  and  alchemy  into 
chemistry,  and  is  changing  internal  medicine  into 
medical  psychology.  On  the  pleasure-pain  princi- 
ple the  idea  comes  into  the  mind  that  it  would  be 
good  to  have  pleasant  weather  tomorrow;  on  the 
reality  principle  we  realize  tomorrow  whether  the 
skies  are  fair  or  not.  On  the  pleasure-pain  princi- 
ple the  idea  occVirs  that  it  would  be  desirable  if  con- 
sciousness could  survive  death.  On  the  reality 
principle  we  have  yet  to  experience  whether  it  . 
will  or  not.  On  the  one  we  get  the  idea  of  what 
we  would  do  if  we  had  immense  wealth;  on  the 
other  it  occurs  to  us  to  count  our  cash,  live  inside 
our  incomes,  save  and  invest.  On  the  one  we  fall 
in  love  and  extravagantly  over-rate  the  good  quali- 
ties of  the  loved  one;  on  the  reality  principle  we 
realize  that  all  is  not  gold  that  glitters,  and  that  he 
who  expects  little  may  get  more  than  he  expects 
but  will  probably  not  suffer  from  disappointment. 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     241 

On  the  pleasure-pain  principle  the  idea  inevitably 
occurs  to  every  child,  and  later  is  only  partially  re- 
pressed by  the  man  or  woman,  that  it  would  be  a 
mark  of  enormous  power  to  have  an  arm  that  could 
reach  to  the  moon  if  necessary  and  could  be  ex- 
tended and  contracted  ad  libitum,  to  control  ex- 
ternal things  by  means  of  words  alone,  to  have  eyes 
that  could  see  infinite  distances  and  infinitely 
small  objects,  to  have  ears  that  could  hear  what 
was  going  on  in  any  part  of  the  world,  and  a  mind 
that  could  understand  the  language  of  all  animals, 
to  have  the  physical  strength  of  Hercules,  the 
beauty  of  Venus,  the  courage  of  Mars,  the  cunning 
of  Mercury,  in  short  to  be  able  to  annihilate  spacQ, 
time  and  the  discrepancy  between  our  real  strength 
and  that  of  any  giant  we  could  think  of.  In  fact 
all  the  myths  and  fairy  stories  in  the  world  of  what-  ^ 
ever  origin  in  various  races  and  tribes  originate 
from  mental  activities  working  according  to  this 
pain-pleasure  principle  and  represent  the  hero,  / 
with  whom  the  reader  or  listener  subjectively  iden- 
tifies himself,  as  one  who  avoids  the  pain  of  being 
weak,  stupid  and  chained  by  time  and  space  and 
custom,  and  gains  the  pleasure  of  being  strong, 
cunning  and  freed  from  temporal,  local  and  moral 
limitations. 

On  this  principle  occur  most  of  the  phenomena 
of  psychical  research,  not  the  facts  proved  by  them 
to  exist  or  not  to  exist,  but  the  ideals  and  activities  _ 
of  the  psychical  researchers  themselves.     In  fact 
the  ideational  content  of  the  modern  psychical  phe- 


242        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

nomena  in  the  first  sense  constitutes  the  modern 
fairy  story.  Restricted  by  the  modern  formula- 
tions of  the  laws  of  nature  inferred  through  in- 
ductive logic  by  physics,  chemistry,  astronomy  and 
psychology  the  modern  fairy  story  is  deprived  of 
its  puissant  heroes  of  olden  lore,  but  the  pleasure- 

/  pain  principle,  being  fundamental  in  the  human 
psyche,  still  survives  and  expresses  itself  in  the  levi- 
tation,  telepathy  and  materialization  which  are  only 
new  names  for  old  things,  believed  in  as  were  the 
exploits  of  the  heroes  of  Greek  or  Scandinavian 
myth.  It  is  inevitable  that  as  long  as  humans  are 
humans  and  swayed  by  unconscious  wishes  there 
will  be  expressions  of  the  pleasure-pain  principle. 
That  these  have  taken  a  scientific  colour  is  due  to 
the  growth  during  the  centuries  of  the  reality  prin- 
ciple which  infers  causes  and  principles  from  sci- 
entifically observed  phenomena. 

Incidentally  it  might  be  mentioned  that  the  psy- 
chical researchers  have  a  scientific  program  which 
they  follow  and  they  protest  first  and  last  that  they 
value  nothing  more  than  the  truth.  They  have  ex- 
posed many  frauds  and  have  been  most  painstaking 
as  the  copious  proceedings  of  the  societies  amply 
demonstrate.  Indeed  there  is  nothing  in  the  orig- 
inal constitution  of  these  societies  that  savours  in 
the  least  of  the  operation  of  the  pleasure-pain  prin- 
ciple but  shows  only  the  reality  principle  at  work. 

/ '  But  the  interpretations  put  upon  the  facts  which 
they  have  demonstrated  show  the  effect  of  the  other 
principle. 


UNCONSCIOUS  EMOTIONS  AND  WILL     243 

What  I  have  said  above  indicates  that  the  pleas- 
ure-pain principle  is  largely  expressed  in  the  desire 
for  the  magnification  of  the  ego.  The  chief  pain 
of  the  ego  is  to  be  curtailed,  constrained  or  limited, 
as  indeed  our  physical  substrate  is  developed  on  the 
principle  of  growth  and  expansion.  The  funda- 
mental pleasure  of  the  ego  is  its  extension. 

Keeping  in  mind  therefore  the  difference  between 
the  reality  feeling,  which  is  an  internal  sensation, 
and  the  principle  of  reality  thinking,  which  is  a 
mental  process  of  a  higher  order,  necessitating  the 
perception  of  the  relations  of  things  to  things  and 
of  things  to  sensations;  and  keeping  in  mind  also 
the  difference  between  the  various  sensations  and 
images  on  the  one  hand  and  the  pleasure-pain  prin- 
ciple on  the  other,  which  is  that  principle  on  which 
the  images  naturally  occur  to  the  conscious  mind  or 
are  repressed  into  the  unconscious,  and  which  has 
to  be  utterly  rejected  by  any  one  in  doing  strictly 
scientific  work,  we  shall  be  in  a  much  better  posi- 
tion to  judge  of  the  scientific  or  unscientific  quality 
of  the  phenomena  offered  by  the  spiritists. 

Maeterlinck  ( Unknown  Guest,  page  111 )  well  ex- 
presses the  attitude  of  mind  dominated  by  the 
I)leasure-pain  principle  in  saying :  "  We  can  con- 
test or  suspect  any  story  whatever,  any  written 
proof,  any  evidence;  but  thenceforward  we  must 
abandon  all  certainty  or  knowledge  that  is  not  ac- 
quired by  means  of  mathematical  operations  or  lab- 
oratory experiments,  that  is  to  say,  three-fourths 
of  the  human  phenomena  which  interest  us  most." 


241        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

This  certainly  implies  that  we  have  a  right  to  be- 
lieve what  interests  us,  but  not  to  claim  that  it  is 
scientifically  proven.  Science  has  to  abandon  all 
so-called  certainty  or  knowledge  not  acquired  by 
mathematical  operations  or  laboratory  experi- 
ments, and  brand  it  neither  certainty  nor  knowl- 
edge. 

According  to  the  reality  principle  we  try  to  as- 
certain what  things  are  and  if  possible  why  they 
are,  without  the  slightest  thought  concerning  what 
we  would  like  to  have  them  be,  or  become.  This  is 
the  conscious  program  of  the  psychical  researcher, 
but  his  unconscious  program  is  quite  different, 
based  upon  the  pain-pleasure  principle  and  forti- 
fied solely  by  the  reslitj^eUnc[^aH  I  purpose  to 
show  in  the  following  chapters. 


PART  III 
THE  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIEIT 


CHAPTER  VII 

BELIEF  BEFORE  KNOWLEDGE 

In  the  spiritistic  seance  and  in  all  study  by 
psychical  researchers  of  the  phenomena  of  spirit- 
ism, the  process  is  quite  similar  to  that  which  I 
have  described  in  Chapter  V  as  taking  i3lace  in  the 
effort  to  recall  a  name.  The  person  who  is  doing 
that  is  looking  for  only  one  thing  —  the  name  — 
and  is  excluding  as  well  as  he  can  from  conscious- 
ness every  other  image  and  every  other  name  that 
is  unable  to  satisfy  his  feeling  of  sameness.  The 
spiritualist  is  necessarily  doing  a  quite  analogous 
thing.  With  a  stencil  which  he  cannot  see  in  his 
mind,  he  is  rejecting  every  other  thought  or  im- 
pression that  occurs  to  him.  The  invisible  stencil 
is  the  idea  of  the  continuance  of  conscious  person- 
ality or  of  a  fact  contradictory  to  nature's  laws  as 
now  known  and  it  is  no  wonder  if  he  finds  some- 
thing to  fill  the  vacuum  of  that  stencil.  On  the  con- 
trary the  modern  scientist  takes  to  nature  no  such 
preconceived  stencil  shape  but  tries  to  find  the  uni- 
form and  universal  principles  that  govern  natural 
phenomena. 

§  1.  Belief 

Belief  is  the  conscious  expression  of  an  uncon- 
scious wish.  The  unconscious  wish  of  the  individ- 
ual is  for  self-aggrandizement  in  all  forms.     One 

247 


248         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

of  the  greatest  of  all  the  forms  of  human  activity 
is  that  of  the  seer,  who  is  one  who  can  persuade 
his  fellows  that  he  can  not  only  see  but  hear,  or  in 
other  senses  perceive,  more  than  they.  In  all  ages 
and  in  all  grades  of  society  the  seer  has  been  ac- 
cepted as  one  whose  subjective  ego  has  been  most 
extensive,  just  as  the  hero  in  the  shape  of  king  or 
general  has  most  enlarged  his  objective  ego. 

I  use  the  terms  subjective  and  objective  ego  here 
in  the  senses  used  by  William  James  in  his  psy- 
chology. The  objective  ego  is  every  concrete  thing 
that  belongs  to  the  individual,  together  with  the 
fields  of  his  external  activity  and  all  the  parapher- 
nalia connected  with  them,  his  land,  his  house,  his 
family,  his  horses,  yachts,  automobiles,  golf  and 
other  equipment,  his  clubs,  his  business  offices,  in 
short  everything  over  which  he  has  special  rights 
and  control.  His  subjective  ego  is  his  mind,  both 
his  conscious  and  his  unconscious  mind,  his  sensa- 
tions, perceptions,  thoughts,  emotions  and  mem- 
ories, both  buried  and  active. 

The  medium  has  become  in  our  day  a  seer,  one 
whose  subjective  ego  has  enlarged  itself  beyond  the 
bounds  of  the  ordinary  man,  and  he  is  worshipped 
in  the  modern  manner  by  all  who  feel  the  need  for 
hero  worship  —  of  the  subjective  sort. 

§  2.  Fear  of  Death 
Applying  this  thought  to  the  matter  of  spiritism 
we  see  that  biologically  there  should  be  in  the 
healthy  animal  no  concern  for  the  continuance  of 


BELIEF  BEFORE  KNOWLEDGE       249 

his  corporate  consciousness,  the  desire  for  it  being 
a  matter  of  internal  situation  in  himself  and  being 
the  obverse*  of  his  fear  that  it  may  not  continue,  for 
we  never  fear  what  we  do  not  desire.     We  always 
consciously  fear  what  we  unconsciously  desire  and 
we  consciously  desire,  in  many  instances,  what  we 
unconsciously  fear.     In  the  healthy  human,  abso- 
lutely normal   and   unimpaired  in  any  way,   the 
thought  cannot  spontaneously  occur  of  the  dissolu- 
tion of  his  personality  nor  the  fear  of  it  nor  the 
wish  for  its  continued  integrity  unless  suggested  to 
him  verbally  by  some  one  who  has,  or  has  had,  such 
a  fear.     The  fear  of  death  is  the  natural  and  un-"  . 
conscious  result  of  the  subliminal  perception  of 
some  incipient  disintegration  in  the  body,  or  weak-  / 
ening  of  some  of  the  functions.     The  fear  of  death 
is  the  effect  of  advancing  age,  as  is  its  conscious  ob- 
verse, the  desire  to  die.     It  is  true  enough  that 
young  people  both  fear  death  and  commit  suicide 
but  their  acts,  if  taken  as  the  result  of  their  total 
internal  situation  are  always  abnormal  and  their 
fears  are  implanted  from  without  on  a  soil  already 
deteriorating    because    of    congenital    weakness. 
Thus  from  another  angle  we  see  the  abnormality  of 
the  deep  interest  in  spirits  displayed  by  some  peo- 
ple.    If  I  were  much  worried  about  what  would  be- 
come of  my  ego  after  my  body^s  functions  all  ceased 
for  ever,  I  should  be  most  active  in  trying  to  find  a 
means  to  prove  my  continued  existence  as  a  spirit 
after  I  ceased  to  exist  as  an  organic  body.     Perhaps 
I  should  not  call  the  interest  in  spirits  an  abnormal- 


250         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

ity  in  old  people.  It  may  be  normal  in  them  just  as 
the  preponderant  interest  in  bodies  is  normal  in 
young  people.  But  when  young  people  display  a 
more  than  verbal  interest  in  spiritistic  phenomena 
there  is  an  indication  that  their  love-life  is  strain- 
ing after  symbols  in  the  place  of  direct  realities, 
which  they  are  denied  by  fate. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  committee  ap- 
pointed by  the  Lambeth  Conference  of  Bishops  in 
1920  in  London  "  deprecate  popular  interest  in  this 
whole  realm  and  emphasize  the  dangers  to  mental 
health  and  peace  which  such  interest  threatens." 

The  thoroughly  absorbed  psychical  researcher, 
therefore,  manifests  traits  of  the  neurotic  disposi- 
tion. He  is  dominated  by  the  death-wish  complex. 
His  utterances,  like  those  of  the  medium,  should, 
in  order  to  assay  them  for  their  true  value,  have  the 
dross  of  the  unconscious  element  smelted  out  of 
them.  For  the  manifestations  of  the  unconscious 
are  to  science,  but  dross,  slag,  and  sludge,  no  mat- 
ter how  fine  gold  they  may  be  for  the  artistic 
mental  activities.  The  phantastic  wish  imaging  of 
the  undirected  unconscious  is  exactly  what  the  sci- 
entific man  wishes  to  get  rid  of.  Like  the  metal- 
lurgist his  aim  is  definite  and  his  results  tangible 
and  pragmatic.  He  may  yet  come  to  analysis  of 
the  dross  of  thought,  has  indeed  been  forced  to  it 
in  the  study  of  mental  disorders,  but  it  is  for  him 
exactly  on  a  par  with  his  other  objective  material. 
That  is,  it  is  his  field  of  study.    But  it  is  fully 


BELIEF  BEFORE  KNOWLEDGE      251 

known  to  Mm  what  he  is  studying  and  for  what 
purpose  he  is  studying  it. 

But  for  the  neurotic  to  take  seriously  the  mental 
states  in  which  he  finds  himself  with  regard  to 
"  spirit ''  and  to  attempt  to  force  science  to  accept 
these  phantasies  as  truths  of  the  same  importance 
as  the  laws  of  gravitation,  of  chemical  affinity  and 
of  relativity  is  much  like  a  child's  asking  an  adult 
to  accept  his  words  about  Mother  Goose  or  Santa 
Glaus  as  scientific  truth  and  incorporating  them  in 
the  principles  of  physics  and  chemistry. 

The  neurotic  is  one  whose  psychical  development, 
not  his  intellectual,  has  been  arrested  at  an  in- 
fantile stage.  Much  of  his  unhappiness  comes  from 
his  over-estimation  of  the  effect  his  wishes  are  sup- 
posed to  have  upon  the  world  of  external  reality. 
The  psychical  researcher  is  in  many  respects  at- 
tempting to  fit  fairy  tales  into  the  precession  of  the 
equinoxes  and  becoming  a  bit  excited  about  the  un- 
willingness of  astronomers  to  accept  his  reconstruc- 
tion. 

§  3.  Contimwusness  of  Urge 

From  the  impellent,  the  ever-driving-on,  nature 
of  the  unconscious  it  is  evident  that  it  knows  of  no 
cessation,  nor  has  there  ever  been  found  any  rea- 
son for  the  ceasing  of  its  activity  during  the  integ- 
rity of  the  physical  organism  which  is  its  material 
expression.  As  fire  burns  while  fuel  lasts  and  is 
within  its  reach,  so  does  the  unconscious  ever  strive. 


252        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

r 

i  The  idea  of  termination  is  a  characteristic  of  con- 
\  sciousness  itself.  Visually  we  consciously  see  the 
ends  of  things,  of  sticks,  of  ropes,  of  lines,  of  sur- 
faces, we  see  where  a  thing  is  and  where  it  is  not. 
Our  consciousness  of  one  thing  ends  and  that  of  an- 
other begins  almost  every  second.  And  consciously 
we  realize  when  our  consciousness  begins  each  day 
and  generally  where  it  ends  each  night.  Therefore 
the  idea  of  death  is  a  conscious  idea  emanating  from 
consciousness  itself.  Against  the  interrupted  na- 
ture of  conscious  life,  with  its  transitions  from  one 
sense  quality  to  another,  each  one  a  break,  an  end- 
ing of  one  experience  and  a  beginning  of  another, 
we  have  as  a  background  the  constant  pull  of  the 
unconscious  craving,  the  buoyant  upward  pressure 
as  of  water  rising  to  its  level,  or  as  of  gases  with 
their  constant  tendency  to  expand. 

Contrasting  with  the  flickering  of  the  taper  of 
consciousness,  changing  the  colour  of  its  light  many 
times  a  minute  with  the  transition  from  sight  to 
sound,  to  touch,  to  organic  sense,  is  the  uniform 
brilliance  of  the  light  of  the  unconscious  craving. 
It  is  no  wonder  then  that  the  question  of  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul  spontaneously  occurs  to  con- 
sciousness, which  perceives  its  every  sensation 
terminating  after  brief  duration.  It  is  not  a  ques- 
tion w^hich  would  occur  to  anything  like  the  uncon- 
scious, that  itself  felt  no  change.  And  conscious- 
ness borne  along,  an  agitated  craft  upon  the 
rough  surface,  has  no  share  in  the  tranquillity 
of     the     depth     of     the     stream.     The     merest 


BELIEF  BEFORE  KNOWLEDGE       253 

shallow    speculation    upon    the    transitoriness   of 
the  conscious  life  will  at  once  reveal  its  many 
breaks,   its   cra^y -patch-work   quality   when   com-\ 
pared  with  the  infinite  calm,  and  reposeful  infinity    / 
of  the  actual  feeling  of  life  and  growth  within. 

So  we  have  here  one  of  the  strongest  motives  for 
a  belief  in  the  continuance  of  a  personal  conscious- 
ness after  death.  It  is  born  of  the  even  and  un- 
ruffled drive  of  life  in  the  vital  organs  themselves, 
as,  in  Greek  mythology.  Aphrodite  was  fabled  to 
have  been  born  of  the  foam  of  the  sea  waves.  The 
unconscious  cannot  conceive  of  its  end,  but  can 
only  feel  its  own  perpetual  expansion.  The  con- 
trast between  the  unconscious  feeling  of  being  and 
the  conscious  sensation  of  ever  changing,  becoming 
and  ending  would  alone  account  for  the  desire  to 
continue  conscious  life  and,  its  obverse,  the  fear  of 
the  discontinuance  of  states  of  consciousness. 

And  it  is  but  a  step  from  the  separate  existence 
of  the  conscious  life  after  death  to  the  separate 
existence  of  consciousness  during  life,  just  as  the 
savage  or  the  child  when  dreaming,  thinks  he  is  in 
another  place  than  where  his  body  is.  And,  the 
dream,  whether  in  the  night  or  in  the  da}^,  has 
this  characteristic  that  it  presents  the  dreamer 
with  an  apparent  power  over  space.  The  savage 
dreams  of  killing  game  in  a  country  new  and 
strange  and  with  powers  of  his  own  greater  than 
he  has  experienced  in  waking  life.  Similarly  the 
medium's  communications  with  spirits  are  an  ex- 
tension  of   power   greater  than   ordinary   in  the 


254         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

average  waking  existence.  The  same  desire  is 
gratified  by  people  who  see  or  think  they  sec*  the 
spirits  of  the  departed  as  is  gratified  by  the  ex- 
tension or  expansion  of  any  physical  tissue  or 
organ.  Power  is  felt  by  the  medium  in  his 
trances.  And  his  spectators  and  auditors  feel, 
themselves,  a  vicarious  power  in  the  medium's  acts 
and  utterances.  It  is  no  wonder  that  both 
mediums  and  their  adherents  fancy  they  feel  an 
actual  physical  force  manifested  at  the  seances, 
f  which  they  attribute  to  a  supernatural  source, 
•^  which  only  means  a  source  not  recognized  by  the 
most  rigorous  physical  science. 

The  motive  for  a  belief  in  perpetuation  of  per- 
sonal identity  is  a  necessary  consequence  of  the 
force  of  the  unconscious  vegetative  life  within  us. 
Its  cessation  is  unthinkable  to  the  unconscious 
itself,  which  is  incessant  in  its  activity,  integrat- 
ing sensations  into  perceptions  absolutely  inde- 
pendently of  the  existence  of  the  stream  of  con- 
scious thought  which  is  as  but  passing  shadows  on 
a  screen.  Now,  given  an  ego  made  up  of  the  abso- 
lutely regular  and  ceaseless  vital  urge  of  the  uncon- 
scious and  the  flickeringly  irregular  and  con- 
stantly terminating  surface  activity  of  conscious- 
ness, the  contrast  between  the  two  could  not  but 
generate  the  wish  for  perpetuity,  not  of  the 
unconscious,  an  idea  which  could  not  be  born  in 
the  unconscious,  but  a  wish  for  the  perpetuity  of 
conscious  life.  A  wish  is  always  for  that  which 
is  not.    We  cannot  wish  to  be  what  we  are,  for  we 


BELIEF  BEFORE  KNOWLEDGE       255 

are  what  we  are.  We  can  say  we  wish  to  be  in 
the  future  what  we  now  are  in  the  present,  but  no 
such  wish  could  be  made  except  from  the  fear  that 
in  the  future  we  shall  not  be  as  we  are  now. 
Freud  has  amply  demonstrated  that  the  uncon- 
scious has  no  sense  of  time,  no  past,  no  future,  but 
only  an  ever  permanent  present.  Therefore  the 
sense  of  force  or  power  or  progress  or  movement  or 
constant  regular  drive  within  us  generates  in  con- 
sciousness a  wish  for  permanence  when  the  latter, 
with  its  ever  ending,  constantly  terminating 
experiences  is  confronted  with  the  cosmic  flow  of 
life  in  the  Unconscious.  Not  until  the  uncon- 
scious drive  emerges  into  the  surface  welter  of 
conscious  life  does  it  become  a  wish,  because,  be- 
fore it  came  into  the  light  of  consciousness  it 
could  not,  so  to  speak,  see  that  anything  ever 
ended. 

And  as  there  are  all  degrees  in  definiteness  of 
concept  between  the  amorphous  and  perduring 
present  of  the  deepest  unconscious  vital  urge,  and 
the  vacillating  and  unsteady  past  and  future  of 
the  transitory  consciousness,  so  we  can  conceive 
the  transformations  of  the  urge  into  a  more  defi- 
nite but  still  unfixed  and  fluent  desire  and  finally 
into  a  finished  and  finite  wish  having  a  visual  or 
an  auditory  or  tactual  or  even  organic  specific 
content. 

The  urge  is  for  perpetual  expression  of  power, 
the  desire  is  for  long  undulations  of  tension  and 
relaxation,  and  the  wish  is  for  the  specific  and 


fi56         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

definite  contact  of  an  end  organ  of  sensation  with 
a  particular  stimulus  or  type  of  stimulus,  or  for 
what  in  more  subjective  spheres  corresponds  to 
these. 

§  4.  Verbal  Expression 

On  the  part  of  every  one  there  is  the  strongest 
possible  objection  to  taking  back  or  recanting  what 
he  has  already  stated.  There  are  two  reasons  for 
this,  the  first  being  that  his  original  statement  was 
prompted  by  his  unconscious  wish  and  has  behind 
it  all  the  force  of  the  unconscious  and  the  second 
that  the  recantation  is  opposed  by  the  same  trend 
that  caused  the  first  statement.  Therefore  a  man 
convinced  against  his  will  is  of  the  same  opinion 
still. 

I  have  mentioned  elsewhere  the  fact  that  all 
statements,  being  the  expression  of  judgments,  are 
the  verbal  expression  of  the  unconscious  wish;  in 
other  words  we  naturally  say  that  something  is  so 
merely  because  we  wish  it  were  so  (whether  it  is 
or  not).  We  express  things  positively  in  most 
instances  in  indicative  moods  of  the  verb,  whereas 
if  we  were  telling  the  objective  truth  we  should 
use  our  verbs  in  the  subjunctive,  potential,  or 
optative  mood  representing  things  as  pro- 
posed, desired  or  conceived  of  as  possible. 

While  I  am  on  the  topic  of  verbal  expression  I 
should  call  to  the  reader's  attention  the  fact  that 
there  does  not  need  to  be  a  verb  in  order  to  indi- 
cate a  complete  thought.     Just  as  a  shout  "  Fire !  " 


BELIEF  BEFORE  KNOWLEDGE       257 

indicates  that  some  one  thinks  a  dangerous  fire  has 
started,  so  any  noun  uttered  by  a  person  may  indl 
catey  though  it  does  not  fully  express,  a  degree  of 
desire  or  aversion,  from  "  Water ''  said  in  appeal- 
ing tone  meaning  "  I  am  very  thirsty  "  to  "  Rub- 
bish ! ''  "  Fudge !  "  or  other  contemptuous  expres- 
sion which  may  "  speak  volumes."  It  is  incon- 
ceivable that  with  every  declaration  in  full 
grammatical  sentence  form  there  does  not  go  un- 
derstood what  might,  using  a  mathematical  term, 
be  called  an  "  exponent  of  desire."  Then  in  the 
most  positive  statement  made  by  any  man  we  should 
expect  the  largest  exponent  of  desire  (or  fear  or 
aversion  according  to  his  emotional  tone).  With 
every  declaration  in  words  whether  single  nouns 
like  those  quoted  above  or  phrases  or  sentences 
there  manifestly  goes  along  an  accompaniment  of 
desire  concerning  the  matter-of-fact  truth  of  it. 

My  contention  here  is  that  in  the  verbal  expres- 
sions of  most  people  this  emotional  accompaniment 
is  the  efficient  cause  of  the  statement  being  made, 
and  is  not  merely  a  subordinate  affair.  Psycholog- 
ically it  is  the  whole  show.  This  need  not  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  real  truth  or  falsity  of  the 
statement.  Children's  "  lies  "  are  all  tvish.  Quite 
transparently  they  say  what  they  do  just  because 
they  wish  what  they  say  were,  or  would  become, 
true. 

With  the  fewest  exceptions,  the  same  emotional 
colouring  must  be  attributed  to  all  statements 
made  by  all  people.     The  statements  made  by  the 


258         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

book  agent,  the  insurance  agent  or  any  one  who  has 
anything  to  sell  are  unquestionably  coloured  by  the 
emotions  of  the  speaker,  desire  to  sell,  fear  of  being 
unable  to  sell,  or  to  persuade  the  prospect. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  in  this  connection  the 
derivation  of  this  word  persuade.  It  is  derived 
from  the  Latin  adjective  suavis  which  means 
"  sweet,  bland,  pleasant."  The  verb  derived  from 
it  therefore  (suadere)  means  practically  to  sweeten 
anything  (mostly  a  judgment)  for  a  person, 
and  the  force  of  the  per  is  "  thoroughly,  com- 
pletely'^  so  that  per-suade  then  always  has  had 
historically  the  radical  meaning  of  successfully 
rendering  a  proposition  sweet,  1.  e.,  acceptable  to 
any  one. 

The  unconscious  mechanism  of  identification 
works  in  the  mind  of  the  hearer  with  the  effect  of 
tending  to  make  him  always  identify  himself  with 
the  speaker.  The  hearer  not  only  unconsciously 
tends  to  reproduce  in  himself,  that  is,  to  imitate 
the  postural  tonus  (see  Chapter  VI,  sec.  2)  but 
also  to  imitate  him  in  matters  more  markedly 
mental,  i.  e.,  to  identify  himself  with  the  speaker. 
And  particularly  is  this  the  case  with  all  state- 
ments in  which  there  is  an  especially  strong  emo- 
tional factor.  Indeed  the  emotions  expansive  and 
indefinite  themselves  are  always  struggling  for  con- 
centration and  definiteness  of  expression,  and  the 
skilful  orator  is  he  who  can  align  and  train  the 
emotions  of  his  hearers  toward  a  definite  concept. 

Not  only  the  orator  but  the  actor,  who  is  helped 


BELIEF  BEFORE  KNOWLEDGE       259 

by  scenery  and  costume,  both  potent  marshals  of 
unconscious  emotions,  is  able  to  bring  the  feelings 
of  his  audience  to  a  point  so  to  speak  where  they 
fire  the  whole  organism  to  action.  The  stage  actor 
thus  produces  in  the  audience  the  clapping  of 
hands  and  on  extreme  occasions  the  throwing  of 
bouquets,  etc.  The  spiritualistic  seance  actor  pro- 
duces in  his  audience  the  wagging  of  tongues.  I  am 
sure  that  the  manual  plaudits  of  the  theatre  are 
in  the  majority  of  cases  the  only  result  of  the 
actor's  efforts,  that  the  making  of  statements  by 
the  emotions  of  the  sitters  has  been  so  far  the  only 
practical  result  of  the  trances  of  the  medium. 

§  5.  Belief  and  Wish 

The  belief  in  disembodied  spirits  is  the  direct 
result  of  the  unconscious  death-wish  on  the  part  of 
the  individual  having  this  belief.  Previous  to  say- 
ing how  this  death-wish  causes  the  conscious  belief 
in  the  opposite  of  death,  it  will  be  necessary  to  say 
something  about  the  idea  of  death  itself  existing 
in  the  unconscious  of  the  persons  most  interested  in 
proving  immortality.  The  wish  for  the  death  of 
some  definite  person  which  is  unconscious  in  the 
mind  of  the  adult  was  a  conscious  wish  in  the  mind 
of  the  same  adult  when  he  was  a  child.  But  it  is 
not  to  be  supposed  that  this  wish  was  for  actual 
demise  and  decomposition  of  the  temporarily  hated 
opponent.  It  was  merely  in  the  child's  mind  a 
conscious  wish  for  the  removal  out  of  sight  or 
sound  or  other  sensation  and  was  exactly  on  a  par 


260         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

with  the  desire  for  the  removal  of  any  other  unde- 
sired  object,  not  necessarily  involving  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  object.  In  other  words  psychical 
removal  is  desired,  not  physical  removal. 

Now  in  the  case  of  the  removal  of  the  object, 
when  that  object  is  a  person,  we  see  not  merely 
that  it  is  not  literally  death  that  is  wished  in  most 
cases,  but  it  is  only  a  temporary  removal  that  is 
wanted,  and  presently  comes  the  wish  for  the  reap- 
pearance of  the  person  just  wished  dead.  The 
whole  thing  is  an  absolutely  childish  mental  mech- 
anism, depending  on  the  child's  belief  in  the 
omnipotence  of  the  wish. 

§  6.  Sadistic  Wish 

Another  infantile  mental  trend  however  appears 
in  the  fabric  of  this  immortality  wish  namely  the 
sadistic-masochistic  trend  according  to  Avhich  the 
child  takes  pleasure  in  paiQ,  either  in  inflicting  it 
(sadism)  or  in  having  it  inflicted  upon  him 
(masochism).  His  sadistic  trend,  if  carried  out, 
would  lead  him  to  torture  and  kill  the  persons  an- 
tagonizing him.  But  these  desires  are  early  re- 
pressed into  the  unconscious  through  the  agency 
of  conventional  civilization. 

When  any  desire  is  repressed  into  the  uncon- 
scious it  becomes  a  tension  which  is  not  relaxed  but 
is  constantly  seeking  relaxation,  and  it  is  bound  to 
get  relaxation  either  in  the  form  originally  imaged 
or  in  some  form  symbolic  of,  or  otherwise  represen- 
tative of,  the  original  wish  form. 


BELIEF  BEFORE  KNOWLEDGE       261 

The  way  in  wliicli  the  sadistic  death-wish  tension 
is  relaxed  is  through  the  compensatory  wish  for  the 
continuance  of  the  life  of  the  person  wished, dead. 
Most  individuals  are  adult  enough  in  intelligence 
and  the  sense  of  reality  to  know  that  the  dead  do 
not  come  back  in  their  own  proper  physical  bodies. 
But  the  principle  of  compensation  absolutely  re- 
quires, as  eye  for  eye  and  tooth  for  tooth,  that  the 
life  taken  away  shall  be  given  back  in  some  form. 
As  the  adult's  sense  of  reality  is  too  keen  to  accept 
the  supposition  that  the  dead  can  be  made  to  live 
again  as  they  were,  they  must  be  made  to  live  in 
some  other  way  after  death.  Hence  the  spirit 
world,  which  is  the  objectification  of  the  sadistic 
death-wish  in  the  unconscious  of  the  believer  in 
spirits,  and  which  is  nothing  else,  having  no  foun- 
dation in  absolute  reality. 

This  then  is  the  explanation  of  the  activities  of 
the  believers  in  spirit  existence,  and  the  stronger 
the  unconscious  sadism  the  profounder  the  belief 
and  in  some  cases  the  more  energetic  the  attempts 
to  prove  scientifically  the  existence  of  something 
that  scientifically  cannot  be  even  conceived. 

The  shape  the  unconscious  death-wish  has  in  the 
unconscious  mind  of  the  ardent  advocate  of  spirit- 
ism is  not  that  of  the  sentence  "  I  wish  F.  were 
dead  "  but  that  of  the  sentence  "  F.  is  dead."  And 
the  necessary  and  inevitable  conscious  reaction  to 
this  unconscious  state  "  F.  is  dead  "  is  the  belief 
"  F.  is  living."  But  as  even  the  simplest  minded 
can  see  that  F.  is  not  living  corporeally,  the  only 


262        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

choice  left  is  that  he  is  living  incorporeallj,  i.  e.,  as 
a  spirit.  And  the  stronger  and  more  repeatedly 
iterated  the  unconscious  state  "  F.  is  dead,"  the 
stronger  is  the  conscious  belief  "  F.  is  living " 
utterly  regardless  of  fact.  Indeed,  other  things 
being  equal,  the  strength  of  the  belief  in  spirits  is 
directly  proportional  to  the  strength  of  the  uncon- 
scious death-wish.  Compensating  for  the  psychic 
removal  mentioned  above,  we  now  have  the  desire 
for  the  psychic  restoration. 

The  death-wish  is  by  the  very  young  child 
directed  against  any  and  every  body  and  thing  that 
interferes  with  his  pleasure.  The  wish  is  equally 
directed  against  those  who  give  him  pain.  We 
thus  clearly  see  the  derivation  of  this  wish  from 
the  pleasure-pain  principle  of  thinking. 

The  sphere  of  pleasures  and  pains  recognizably 
coming  from  persons  and  not  things  in  the  infants' 
world  gradually  widens  approaching  as  its  limit 
the  entire  universe.  But  those  having  most  to  do 
with  the  infant  are  the  ones  likely  both  to  give  the 
greatest  pleasure  and  inflict  the  greatest  pains. 
Life  is  made  up  of  both,  and  where  there  is  the  most 
life,  there  will  be  most  of  both  pain  and  pleasure. 
The  inf ant V  life,  as  far  as  persons  are  concerned  is 
composed  almost  exclusively  of  mother  and  father 
and  nurse^and  brothers  and  sisters.  Is  is  there- 
fore not  surprising  on  the  one  hand  that  they 
should  most  often  be  the  objects  of  the  infantile 
death-wish,  and,  on  the  other,  that  they  should  be 
the  very  ones  about  whose  survival  after  death  there 


BELIEF  BEFORE  KNOWLEDGE       2G3 

should  in  the  average  individuaFs  mind  be  the 
most  concern. 

§  7.  Spiritism  and  War 

There  is,  therefore,  a  connection  between  spirit- 
ism and  war,  history  showing  that  after  the  swing- 
ing of  the  pendulum  to  the  crassly  material  before 
or  during  a  war  there  is  a  general  swing  toward 
the  other  direction  of  an  excessive  spiritual  view 
after  the  war.  So  it  has  occurred  during  and  after 
the  late  European  conflict,  the  spiritual  phenomena 
appearing  not  only  during  the  war  on  account  of 
the  speedy  satisfaction  of  the  unconscious  craving 
for  excitement  on  the  part  of  non-combatants  and 
those  invalided  out  of  it,  but  also  appearing  after 
the  war  in  a  popular  interest  in  things  spiritual. 
This  is  contributed  to,  of  course,  but  not  caused 
by,  the  large  number  of  deaths  of  those  actively 
participating  in  the  struggle.  The  sudden  bereave- 
ments occasion  but  do  not  cause  a  recrudescence  of 
the  unconscious  wish  for  self-preservation,  and  the 
neurotic  part  of  humanity  exhausts  all  its  resources 
in  trying  to  find  logical  reasons  to  prove  that  it 
has  in  these  times  the  strongest  motives  for  desir- 
ing to  prove.  Of  this  the  book  Roland  is  an  indi- 
cation entirely  apart  from  any  scientific  validity 
which  the  statements  made  in  it  may,  or  may  not 
have. 

From  every  side  the  facts  point  to  the  preponder- 
ant if  not  exclusive  role  played  in  spiritistic  phe- 
nomena by  the  very  fact  of  belief.     Human  think- 


264        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

Ing  universally  proceeds  according  to  the  program 
of  believing  first  and  trying  to  prove  afterwards. 
This  is  the  pain-pleasure  principle  referred  to 
above,  and  quite  independently  of  it  and  frequently 
absolutely  antagonistic  to  it  there  develops  quietly, 
slowly  and  surely  the  reality  principle,  which  sees 
actual  relations  of  things  to  each  other,  and  does 
not  merely  see  the  relation  of  things  to  self  and  to 
the  unconscious  cravings  of  the  ego. 

Thus  it  is  the  relations  of  things  to  each  other 
which  is  the  subject  matter  of  all  science,  of  astron- 
omy, of  chemistry,  of  physics,  of  modern  analytical 
psychology,  while  it  is  the  relations  of  the  things  of 
the  external  world  to  the  ego  which  constitutes  the 
subject  matter  of  art,  music,  poetry  and  all 
branches  of  human  activity  where  the  emotions 
enter  in  as  an  important  factor.  All  these  take 
their  values  from  the  emotional  factor,  whether  it 
be  conscious  or  unconscious,  but  largely  from  the 
latter  because  of  its  far  greater  richness  and  primi- 
tive power. 


* 


CHAPTER  VIII 

KNOWLEDGE  ABOVE  BELIEF 

§  1.  Ambivalence 

The  ancient  Greek  myths  mentioned  in  Chapter 
V,  those  of  Niobe,  Arachne,  and  Salmoneus  who 
were  punished  by  the  gods  for  over  much  pride  and 
self-aggrandizement  are  the  working  out  of  an  idea 
into  externality  —  giving  concrete  form  to  it 
—  an  idea  that  is  founded  upon  the  physical  fact 
that  existence  is  the  result  of  opposing  forces. 
The  solidest  marble  is  conceived  as  the  result  of 
the  interplay  of  atoms  in  reciprocating  motion  of 
infinite  rapidity.  The  position  of  any  living 
animal  is  the  net  result  of  the  contractions  of  his 
antagonistic  muscles,  which  are  in  pairs  all  over 
his  body.  Suddenly  paralyse  one  of  any  of  these 
pairs  and  the  other  of  them  will  contract  still  more 
until  compensation  is  otherwise  made. 

In  our  mind  there  is  the  same  balance  main- 
tained by  opposing  ideas,  or  the  ideas  are  our  con- 
sciousness of  presence  or  lack  of  the  balance  of 
certain  minute  antagonistic  muscles  situated 
somewhere  in  our  body.  In  the  myth  of  Niobe,  and 
in  the  proverb  "  Pride  goeth  before  a  fall "  there 
is  the  recognition  of  the  same  antagonism.  In  the 
internal  sensations  called  emotions  there  is  inev- 
itably  a   reaction.    If  we   become  hilarious,   we 

265 


266        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIEIT 

actually  get  tired  of  being  hilarious  and  presently 
become  serious. 

Applied  to  the  emotions  this  action  and  reaction 
rhythm  is  called  ambivalence.  It  is  as  character- 
istic of  the  emotional  life  as  it  is  of  the  muscles  of 
the  athlete  or  of  the  molecules  of  marble  in  the 
statue  of  the  athlete. 

But  it  is  not  enough  to  say  that  emotions  succeed 
each  other  in  consciousness  rhythmically  chang- 
ing from  grave  to  gay,  from  fear  to  courage,  from 
love  to  hate.  That  is  merely  describing  what  ap- 
pears on  the  surface.  The  succession  of  emotions 
manifest  to  consciousness  is  determined  in  every 
case  by  tensions  in  the  unconscious  with  which  the 
conscious  emotions,  moods,  etc.,  are  more  closely 
connected  than  they  are  with  each  other. 

§  2.  Mental  Microscope 

The  intimate  construction  of  many  material 
things  is  made  visible  by  looking  at  them  through 
a  microscope.  In  psychological  analysis  we  have 
such  a  microscope.  The  same  result  would  be  at- 
tained if  we  could  magically  enlarge  the  object  we 
wished  to  see.  If  we  could  dip  a  fly  into  a  magic 
liquid  that  would  increase  each  particle  of  him  so 
that  the  whole  of  him  would  be  as  large  as  an 
elephant,  we  could  look  at  him  with  the  naked  eye 
and  learn  as  much  or  more  of  his  structure  as  we 
now  do  by  means  of  the  microscope.  It  is  just  a 
question  of  relative  dimensions  between  him  and 
us. 


KNOWLEDGE  ABOVE  BELIEF        267 

There  is  a  similar  enlargement  naturally  taking 
place  in  the  minds  of  certain  people.  We  call 
these  people  abnormal  but  the  enlargement  takes 
place  according  to  absolutely  regular  natural  laws. 
W^e  can  in  such  people  see,  if  we  look,  the  ideas  of 
one  thing  and  another,  and  their  emotions  and  the 
connections  between  emotions  and  ideas.  They 
have  been  enlarged  to  the  scale  necessary  to  be 
observed  by  human  eyes  that  can  see.  For  these 
enlarged  mental  states  we  need  no  microscope;  we 
need  only  the  reality  principle  working  in  our 
minds  to  show  us  the  actual  relations  between  ideas 
and  emotions  and  things, .  relations  we  ought  to 
know  so  as  to  be  able  to  act  more  intelligently 
toward  our  fellow^s,  but  which  we  are  only  begin- 
ning to  know.  It  is  as  if  Nature  had  herself  gratui- 
tously, and  without  any  making  or  arranging  of 
lenses  on  our  part,  enlarged  some  mental  fly  so 
that  any  one  with  the  right  attitude  toward  life 
could  see  the  structure  of  his  human  mind,  and 
make  the  logical  inference  about  the  minds  of  others. 

The  people  whose  mind-states  are  thus  naturally 
enlarged  are  called  neurotics.  In  the  past  they 
were  called  abnormal,  but  we  know  that  there  is 
nothing  abnormal  about  them  except  their  over- 
size ideas.  The  scientific  study  of  these  over-size 
ideas  has  given  us  the  deepest  knowledge  we  ever 
had  about  the  structure  and  functions  of  the  mind. 
The  magic  liquid  in  which  we  jjroposed  to  soak  our 
illustrative  fly  is  not  needed  here,  for  the  fly  has 
himself  expanded,  as,  to  our  view,  expands  the  on- 


2G8         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

coming  vessel  in  the  harbour  till  it  reaches  the 
dock  and  we  can  board  and  examine  it. 

The  neurosis  is  the  magic  liquid  which  exagger- 
ates the  size  of  certain  things,  and  the  neurotic,  for 
our  present  purposes  of  comparison,  is  merely  one 
who  shows  a  "  close-up  "  of  a  normal  soul  in  opera- 
tion. His  ability  to  get  nearer  to  us  so  that  we 
can  see  him  is  his  only  peculiarity.^  But  we  have 
always  pushed  him  away  whenever  he  has  come 
nearer  until  Freud  indicated  the  way  to  study  him 
by  means  of  looking  at  the  shadows,  as  it  were,  or 
less  illuminated  portions,  of  this  nearby  view. 

y  §  3.  The  Neurotic 

All  this  by  way  of  introduction  to  the  account  of 
what  the  neurosis  has  shown  us  about  the  working 
of  the  ordinary  unmagnified  mind.  There  is  a 
type  of  neurotic  the  main  lineaments  of  whose 
''  close-up ''  mental  picture  are  the  tendencies 
which  he  shows  to  do  certain  things  without  defi- 
nitely knowing  why  he  does  them.  Asked  why  he 
does  them  he  may  give  no  answer  or  may  say  he 
does  not  know.  He  does  know  that  he  feels  un- 
comfortable or  unhappy  if  he  does  not  do  them. 
This  also  might  be  said  of  many  habits  in  ordinary 
peofjle,  like  smoking  for  instance,  and  many 
peculiar  mannerisms  of  posture,  action  and  voice. 
To  explain  them  as  merely  habit  is  however  to  give 
no  real  explanation,  which  indeed  lies  in  the  un- 
conscious wish  behind  these  actions. 

1  Cp.  the  words  of  Frank,  Chap.  V. 


KNOWLEDGE  ABOVE  BELIEF        269 

The  neurotic,  however,  of  the  type  I  am  describ- 
ing feels  a  much  more  compulsive  tendency  to  carry 
out  his  actions  and  the  actions  themselves  are 
likely  to  be  more  peculiar  than  those  generally 
known  as  habits.  They  are  habits,  but  they  are 
eccentric  habits  and  moreover  they  are  habits  not 
of  body  primarily  but  of  mind. 

Examples  of  these  habits  are  infinitely  various 
from  washing  the  hands  every  time  the  neurotic 
touches  any  particular  thing,  which  itself  is  eccen- 
trically picked  out  for  this  special  reaction,  to  a 
necessity  felt  for  counting  one  class  of  objects  or 
another,  or  balancing  fortunate  happenings  with 
misfortunes  in  the  daily  paper. 

The  classical  illustration  is  the  compulsion  not 
to  touch  certain  objects.^  Nothing  definite  was 
known  about  the  cause  of  this  compulsion  until 
hypnosis  was  used,  and  the  patient  then  remem- 
bered what  it  was  that  one  time  when  a  child  he 
had  very  much  desired  to  touch  and  had  been  for- 
bidden. The  prohibition  later  was  forgotten.  All 
the  patient  consciously  knew  was,  not  that  he  had 
been  told  not  to  touch  the  object  in  question  (a 
part  of  himself),  but,  that  he  had  the  strongest 
possible  aversion  to  touching  it.  Consciously  it 
gave  him  much  displeasure  if  he  had  to  touch  it. 
In  the  hypnosis  it  was  revealed  that  formerly  it 
gave  him  the  keenest  pleasure  to  touch  that  part 
of  himself.  So  it  is  shown  that  the  unconscious 
motive  that  impelled  him  to  touch  was  the  pleas- 

1  Freud:  Totem  and  Taboo,  page  48. 


270        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

ure  he  received  from  the  act.  Also  what  caused 
him  to  stop  touching  it  was  a  greater  pleasure 
coming  from  pleasing  the  person,  his  father,  who 
told  him  not  to  touch.  The  pleasure  or  satisfac- 
tion of  not  touching  remained  in  consciousness, 
and  the  other  pleasure  was  forgotten.  But  the 
unconscious  motive  still  remained,  and  was  the 
motive  power  for  the  compulsion. 

So  it  may  be  said  of  this  person  that  uncon- 
sciously he  still  strongly  desires  to  touch  while 
consciously  he  has  the  strongest  aversion  to  touch- 
ing this  part  of  himself,  an  aversion  as  strong  as  is 
the  unconscious  desire.  We  may  say  that  this 
patient  at  one  and  the  same  time  both  wants,  and 
does  not  want,  to  touch.  This  strong  antagonism 
between  motives  and  the  emotions  behind  them  is 
the  ambivalence  mentioned  above.  In  no  sense 
could  it  be  called  abnormal,  being  the  absolutely 
necessary  result  of  the  desire  coming  from  within 
and  the  prohibition  imposed  from  without.  And 
not  only  neurotics  but  also  completely  normal  aver- 
age individuals  can  find  examples  in  their  own  lives 
of  this  emotional  ambivalence.  It  is  the  effect  of 
contrary  pulls  from  within  and  without,  and  in- 
evitably produces  its  perfectly  natural  result. 
Only  in  the  neurotic  the  result  is  magnified  so  that 
it  can  easily  be  seen,  while  in  the  average  individual 
it  is  generally  unnoticeable  unless  specially  looked 
for. 

The  importance  of  this  detailed  study  of  the 
ambivalence  of  the  emotions  of  the  neurotic  is  that 


KNOWLEDGE  ABOVE  BELIEF        271 

it  shows  exactly  what  takes  place  in  normal  life 
among  primitive  peoples  with  regard  to  their 
actions  toward  their  parents  and  ultimately  toward 
their  ancestors.  And  it  furnishes  thus  a  very  clear 
idea  of  how  religions  have  always  arisen  in  all 
races. 

§  4.  The  Normal  Compulsion 

The  greatest  pleasure  to  the  ego  of  the  primitive 
man,  is  to  be  the  strongest,  which  includes  the 
death  or  banishment  of  all  the  other  men  of  the 
group  whatever  the  group  —  family  or  tribe  —  may 
be.  Whatever  prohibition  may  come  from  with- 
out to  the  men  of  su-ch  a^group,  the  earliest  example 
of  it  being  the  iamily,  would  come  only  as  a  pro- 
hibition against  doing  what  was  very  much  desired. 
In  fact  no  restriotions  or  restrictive  laws  are  ever 
made  against  any  action  that  is  not  much  desired. 

Before  going  on  with  this  topic  I  shall  stop  long 
enough  to  remark  that  the  making  of  the  prohibi- 
tion itself  is  the  work  of  the  unconscious  desire  on 
the  part  of  the  maker  of  the  prohibition  to  do  the 
prohibited  thing.  Furthermore,  the  vigour  with 
which  any  infringement  of  this  law  is  punished  is 
determined  by  the  strength  of  the  desire  on  the 
part  of  the  persons  punishing  to  do  the  same  thing. 

§  5.  The  Taboo 

The  ambivalence  of  emotion  shown  by  the  com- 
pulsion neurotic  is  found  to  be  closely  paralleled 
by  the  actions  of  many  primitive  peoples  with  re- 
gard to  certain  things.     The  word  taboo  which  has 


272        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIKIT 

recently  come  into  all  civilized  languages  from  the 
Pacific  Islands  expresses  that  group  of  actions. 
According  to  the  taboo,  a  man  may  not  do  this  or 
that,  a  more  or  less  elaborate  code  of  action  vary- 
ing somewhat  in  different  races  of  primitive  peo- 
ples. The  striking  peculiarity  of  all  the  taboos  is 
their  apparent  unreason  and  unaccountability. 
The  savages  themselves  have  no  more  coherent 
reason  to  assign  for  what  they  do  than  has  the  com- 
pulsion neurotic  for  his  eccentricities.  No  light 
could  be  thrown  on  the  actions  of  primitive  man 
under  the  taboo  regulations  until  the  unconscious 
wish  was  taken  into  account. 

Another  striking  fact  of  primitive  social  life  is 
the  totem  and  the  effect  it  has  upon  the  conduct  of 
the  tribe  on  the  one  hand  and  the  biological  status 
of  the  tribe  on  the  other.  On  the  face  of  it  the 
totem  is  a  plant  or  animal  with  which  the  mem- 
bers of  the  totem  group  identify  themselves,  with 
the  result  that  they  thus  compel  themselves  not  to 
kill  or  mate  with  any  one  of  the  same  totem  group. 
Furthermore,  also  an  important  point,  they  identify 
themselves  with  the  totem  to  the  extent  of  believ- 
ing that  they  are  descendants  of  it.  Thus  there 
results  a  social  mechanism  preventing  inbreeding. 
How  it  originated  was  a  matter  of  doubt  and  specu- 
lation until  Freud's  explanation  of  the  unconscious 
motivation  of  it. 

For  he  has  shown  that  the  prohibitions  con- 
nected with  the  totem  are  against  the  fundamental 
desire  on  the  part  of  the  unconscious  of  all  peo- 


KNOWLEDGE  ABOVE  BELIEF        273 

pies  to  do  the  very  thing  this  particular  taboo  pro- 
hibited, namely  the  mating  with  the  nearest  female, 
which  in  the  family  or  totem  group  would  naturally 
be  the  nearest  relatives.  This  is  also  related  to 
the  descent  of  the  tribe  from  the  totem  animal  or 
plant,  if  we  reflect  that  the  very  thing  that  is  pro- 
hibited, namely  the  mating  with  women  within  the 
totem  group  is  exactly  what  is  on  the  one  hand 
most  desired  by  the  young  males  of  that  group  and 
what  is  most  decidedly  not  wished  by  the  head  of 
the  group  who  is  most  identified  with  the  totem 
and  is  in  a  sense  the  representative  of  the  father. 
This  prohibition  drives  the  young  males  to  seek 
mates  from  other  groups  and  the  biological  require- 
ment of  cross  fertilization  is  fulfilled. 

§  6.  The  Totem 

From  this  very  brief  explanation  of  what  is  in 
reality  a  much  more  complicated  matter  we  come 
to  the  consideration  of  the  evident  derivation  of 
spirits  from  the  projection  of  the  father  idea  into 
the  totem.  The  father  or  head  of  the  totem  group 
is  naturally  the  chief  enemy  of  the  young  males 
from  the  point  of  view  of  their  desires  to  mate  with 
their  own  totem-group  women.  He  is  the  chief 
factor  in  their  inability  to  do  so.  So  he  received 
an  amount  of  hatred  from  the  young,  which  is 
either  conscious  or  repressed  into  the  unconscious, 
according  to  the  state  of  civilization  of  the  group. 
In  modern  civilized  society  the  unconscious  antag- 
onism between  father  and  sons  in  their  rivalry  for 


274         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

the  attention  and  affection  of  the  wife  and  mother, 
is  generally  a  wholly  unconscious  affair,  but  yet  it 
explains  many  otherwise  inexplicable  actions  on 
the  part  of  both  father  and  sons.  Generally,  too, 
and  under  the  influence  of  most  religions,  there  is 
even  a  good  bit  of  affection  and  reverence  felt  by 
the  sons  for  the  father.  His  superiority  in  age  and 
attainments  and  social  position  sometimes  indeed 
compel  the  admiration  of  his  sons.  But  the  effect 
of  this  unconscious  hatred  of  father  and  sons  is  to 
produce  in  the  sons  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
as  the  case  may  be  according  to  civilization,  a 
strong  feeling  of  joy  when  the  father  dies.  Now 
this  feeling  of  joy  is  balanced  by  a  real  sense  of 
loss  and  a  regret  for  the  hatred  that  has  been  ex- 
pended upon  the  father.  So  that  there  are  present 
the  motives  both  for  exalting  the  good  qualities  of 
the  father  and  fearing  and  propitiating  him  in  his 
hostile  aspect. 

It  is  virtually  this  hostility  of  his  sons  that  deifies 
him  in  their  eyes  and  not  the  friendly  feelings, 
paradoxical  though  this  may  at  first  appear.  His 
greatest  strength  with  them  is  as  their  enemy,  for 
his  tenure  is  dependent  on  his  ability  to  overcome 
them  either  physically  or  mentally.  Therefore  the 
power  and  the  glory  which  is  attributed  to  their 
father  when  he  is  in  their  heaven  is  the  association 
of  a  feeling  of  reality  in  themselves  with  the  idea 
or  mental  image,  not  his  actual  presence,  naturally, 
as  he  is  dead.  And  this  linking  of  a  feeling  of 
reality  with  something  no  longer  existing  is  the 


KNOWLEDGE  ABOVE  BELIEF        275 

cause  of  all  belief  in  spirits  from  the  earliest  pre- 
historic times  to  the  present  day.  This  recoupling 
of  the  reality  feeling  with  an  idea  or  image  is  no 
rarity  at  any  time,  particularly  after  the  reality 
feeling  has  of  necessity  been  uncoupled  from  its 
former  associates,  the  actual  visual  and  other  sense 
qualities  of  the  living  ancestor.  And  the  belief 
that  he  is  now  a  spirit  is  reinforced  by  a  belief  that 
spirits  are  more  powerful  than  and  can  do  much 
harm  to  the  living. 

§  7.  ^^  Spirit  '^  a  Projection 

This  projection  of  the  unconscious  wish,  to 
maintain  existence  after  death,  into  the  hyposta- 
tization  of  a  spirit  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  religions, 
both  the  most  ancient  animistic  and  anthropomor- 
phic and  the  most  modern,  the  spiritistic.  In  all 
races  and  nations  the  father  becomes  a  deity,  or 
the  deity  takes  on  the  paternalistic  form,  and  men 
consciously  believe,  because  they  unconsciously 
wish,  that  they  too,  when  their  time  comes  to  die, 
may  yet  live  like  the  ancestor,  whom  they  have 
given  a  spiritual  life,  in  order  on  the  one  hand  to 
propitiate  him  and  on  the  other  to  recompense  him 
for  the  hatred  with  which  he  was  regarded  during 
his  life,  and  substitute  in  their  own  life  a  pleasant 
affection  for  the  unpleasant  hate. 

It  is  thus  evident  that  the  projection  of  an  in- 
ternal sensation  upon  the  external  world  is  the 
origin  both  of  the  compulsion  neurosis  in  the  in- 
dividual and  the  religion  of  a  people  or  a  race.     It 


276        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

is  all  the  more  imperative,  therefore,  that  any 
statement  claimed  to  be  scientific,  about  the  exist- 
ence of  a  disembodied  intelligence  be  with  the 
greatest  care  examined  as  to  its  origin. 

The  history  of  science  has  plenty  of  examples  of 
the  reality  principle  being  overcome  by  the  pleas- 
ure principle  of  thinking.  The  latter  furnishes  the 
impediment  to  the  instant  acceptance  of  any  scien- 
tific truth,  and  has,  from  Galileo's  time  until  the 
present  day.  As  an  example  of  this  we  may  men- 
tion the  survival  for  so  long  a  time  of  Lamarckian- 
ism  in  the  theory  of  evolution  in  spite  of  the  ac- 
cumulating proofs  that  the  innate  constitution 
of  the  germ  plasm  is  the  medium  of  heredity  and 
that  no  characteristics  acquired  in  adulthood  can 
have  an  effect  upon  the  genes  or  subgenes  of  the 
chromosomes. 

The  projection  of  internal  sensations  upon  the 
external  world  is  attributing  to  the  world  qualities 
inherent  only  in  the  person  doing  the  attributing. 
It  is  belief  and  not  fact,  scientific  fact  being  a  mat- 
ter in  which  the  internal  sensations  are  in  no  way 
concerned.  The  evidence  of  the  senses  is  worth- 
less for  science.  The  very  fact  that  there  are  such 
things  as  hallucinations  is  sufficient  proof  of  this. 
That  there  are  visual  mental  images  sometimes 
associated  with  quite  as  strong  a  feeling  of  reality 
as  are  actual  visual  impressions  generally,  should 
make  ridiculous  the  idea  of  offering  as  scientific 
proof  of  disembodied  intelligences  any  statement 
based  on  the  "  evidence  of  the  senses.''     It  should 


KNOWLEDGE  ABOVE  BELIEF        277 

at  once  call  for  the  complete  exclusion  of  the 
human  element  from  all  experimentation  with  the 
end  in  view  of  showing  personality  existing  apart 
from  the  body.  ^But  in  spite  of  the  manifest  neces- 
sity of  excluding  human  error  the  so-called  proofs 
of  existence  of  spirit  have  been  almost  without  ex- 
ception presented  in  a  form  where  not  only  is  the 
human  element  present  but  also  the  unconscious 
element  is  paramount,  that  factor  which  the  spirit- 
ists have  never  yet  analysed  with  the  thoroughness 
that  the  psychoanalysts  have  evinced  in  their  really 
scientific  study/  For,  as  has  been  mentioned  else- 
where, a  scientific  truth  is  never  a  presentation 
(sensation  or  impression  or  feeling)  but  is  a  uni- 
formly observed  relation  hetiveen  presentations, 
either  a  quantitative  or  a  qualitative  relation,  such 
as  are  the  facts  on  which  chemistry  and  physics  are 
based. 

The  present  day  motives  for  a  belief  in  spirits 
are  not  adequately  accounted  for  without  tracing 
this  connection  with  the  motives  which  must  have 
been  the  unconscious  ones  on  the  part  of  primitive 
man  in  his  development  of  the  philosophic  system 
known  as  animism. 

In  his  Totem  and  Tahoo  (p.  154,  N.  Y.  1918) 
Freud  puts  the  question:  "What  essential  part 
of  our  psychological  structure  is  reflected  and  re- 
viewed in  the  projection  formation  of  souls  and 
spirits?  "  and  answers  it  as  follows :  "  The  thing 
which  we,  just  like  primitive  man,  project  into 
outer  reality,  can  hardly  be  anything  else  than  the 


278        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

recognition  of  a  state  in  which  a  given  thing  is 
present  to  the  senses  and  to  consciousness,  next  to 
which  another  state  exists  in  which  the  thing  is 
latent  but  can  reappear,  that  is  to  say,  the  coexis- 
tence of  perception  and  memory,  or,  to  generalize 
it,  the  existence  of  unconscious  psychic  processes 
next  to  conscious  ones.  It  might  be  said  that  in 
the  last  analysis  the  spirit  of  a  person  or  a  thing 
is  the  faculty  of  remembering  and  representing  the 
object  after  he  or  it  was  withdrawn  from  con- 
scious perception." 

If  society  attempts  to  wipe  out  but  really  only 
represses  extensive  areas  of  the  mating  or  parental 
instinct,  what  aim  or  purpose  of  society's  is  thereby 
striven  toward?  It  must  not  be  supposed  that  be- 
fore the  present  century,  society  has  been  conscious 
of  any  specific  aim.  Society  as  a  conscious  indi- 
vidual is  conceivable,  but  the  concept  is  irrelevant 
in  the  present  discussion.  The  conscious  indi- 
vidual may  also  be  regarded  as  an  organism  of 
separately  existing  elements  more  or  less  as 
a  nation  is  organized  into  a  unit  by  the  compelling 
personality  of  one  of  its  individual  members,  or  as 
a  large  commercial  organization  is  dominated  by  a 
Rockefeller  or  a  Vail.  There  are  people  who  are 
as  well  integrated  as  any  huge  business  corpora- 
tion and  others  as  ill  as  some  "  general  stores  "  in 
rural  districts. 

A  separate  human  individual  may  be  conceived 
as  consisting  of  a  combination  or  assemblage  of 
two   or  more  unitarily  functioning  constituents. 


KNOWLEDGE  ABOVE  BELIEF        279 

The  body  is  composed  of  various  "  systems  "  that 
are  named  according  to  the  unities  that  they  ap- 
parently comprise.  There  is  the  nervous  system 
and  the  circulatory  system,  the  alimentary  and  the 
lymphatic  system,  and  within  these  the  arterial, 
the  gastric,  enteric,  etc.,  the  body  being  made  up 
of  various  organs  each  one  of  which  is  practically 
a  unity  by  itself  and  yet  has  an  essential  interde- 
pendence upon  some  other  or  others.  In  fact  it  is 
almost  impossible  to  decide  where  one  begins  and 
the  other  leaves  off,  and  the  fact  that  not  one  of 
these  organs  could  function  outside  of  the  body, 
would  make  it  seem  impossible  that  it  could  be 
called  a  separate  organ,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
hearts  have  been  kept  beating  and  kidneys  capable 
of  functioning  in  foreign  receptacles  for  weeks. 
The  idea  that  the  individual  human  is  an  individual 
in  the  sense  of  being  able  to  maintain  a  separate 
existence  is  only  relative.  If  he  were  taken  out  of 
all  mundane  relations  he  would  not  live,  and  if  he  is 
removed  from  social  relations  only,  in  such  a  way 
that  he  could  not  ideally  reproduce  remembered 
social  relations,  such  as  was  the  history  of  persons 
like  Caspar  Hauser,  he  will  cease  to  be,  or  will 
never  be,  human. 

§  8.  Repression  of  Mating  Instinct 

But  when  we  talk  of  society  repressing  a  natural 
instinct  we  are  in  general  really  talking  about  no 
more  conscious  process  than  there  is  in  the  growth 
,of  a  tree,  until  we  begin  to  realize  that  in  this,  the 


280        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

twentieth  century,  there  are  elements  of  activity 
in  operation  that  are  analogous  to  the  mental 
activity  of  individuals. 

It  is  true  enough  that,  in  the  past,  groups  of 
individuals  have  acted  with  apparent  unity  of  pur- 
pose, and  with  a  purpose  that  seemed  to  visualize 
so  clearly  the  end  achieved  that  one  is  impressed 
with  the  wonder  of  it. 

For  example,  the  various  means  which  savage 
tribes  have  adopted  to  secure  cross  fertilization  and 
prevent  inbreeding  show  an  integrated  activity 
characterizing  the  group,  resulting  in  certain 
taboos,  thus  preventing  the  "  marriage  "  of  closely 
related  persons.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  however, 
that  cross  fertilization  was  in  any  way  maintained 
as  a  conscious  aim.  On  the  contrary,  taboos  of 
this  nature  exist  among  savages  who  are  so  ignor- 
ant of  sexual  physiology  as  not  to  know  the  con- 
nection between  intercourse  and  conception. 

But  in  the  modern  scientific  knowledge  of  the 
laws  of  heredity  which  we  have  accumulated  so  far, 
we  see  that  while  the  savage  may  not  have  been 
conscious  of  exactly  what  he  as  an  individual  was 
doing  for  the  betterment  of  his  tribe,  there  must 
have  been  in  the  unconscious  minds  of  the  un- 
tutored themselves  just  those  combinations  of 
ideas,  derived  in  all  probability  from  experience, 
that  made  them  do  the  things  whose  wisdom  they 
could  not  see.  Under  the  name  of  worshipping  a 
hideous  totem  they  did  what  we  with  our  scientific 


KNOWLEDGE  ABOVE  BELIEF        281 

knowledge  call  by  an  entirely  different  name. 
The  instinct  of  man  which  causes  him  to  adopt 
customs  minimizing  inbreeding  is  only  one  of  the 
many  instincts  shown  by  him,  some^of  which  have 
indeed  landed  him  in  his  present  pitiable  predica- 
ment. It  may  be  said  that  his  instincts  have 
prompted  him  in  some  parts  of  the  world  to  exactly 
the  opposite  kind  of  acts. 

As  the  net  result  of  the  instincts  on  which  pres- 
ent civilization  is  founded  is  so  humiliating  in  view 
of  the  present  conditions  all  over  the  world  it  is 
well  worth  considering  whether  the  natural  evolu- 
tion of  social  ideals,  in  which  little  if  any  of  the 
unconscious  mental  process  is  taken  into  considera- 
tion, is  worth  maintaining  at  all.  Would  it  not  be 
better  to  make  a  really  objective  study  of  the 
human  and  animal  instincts  everywhere,  and 
attempt  to  find  out  what  they  have  led  to  in  their 
various  developments  in  different  parts  of  the 
world?  Furthermore,  is  such  an  objective  scien- 
tific study  practically  possible  and  could  the  results 
of  it,  when  arrived  at,  be  transmitted  to  enough  of 
the  world  to  make  it  really  practicable?  Evidently 
not  enough  people  have  thought  so  to  make  a  really 
noticeable  difference. 

And  yet,  in  view  of  the  increasing  knowledge 
which  a  spread  of  intercommunication  between 
peoples  produces,  without  such  an  effort  to  dis- 
cover what  has  been  done  by  humans  and  what 
could  be  done,  humanity  would  be  supine  indeed. 


282        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIKIT 

All  we  can  do  is  to  do  all  we  know  how,  at  the  same 
time  studying  as  diligently  as  possible  how  we  can 
do  better. 

According  to  his  lights  a  few  generations  ago  all 
a  man  could  do  was  to  obey  the  authoritative  com- 
mands of  the  church  or  the  king  and  he  would  know 
that  he  was  doing  as  well  as  he  was  or  could  be 
expected  to  do.  But  the  theory  of  democracy  is 
that  each  man  is  now  himself  a  king,  or  at  any  rate 
should  be  authority  for  himself.  This  implies  that 
all  men  should  be  trained  as  potential  leaders  so 
that  the  most  potent  shall  be  chosen  to  lead  where 
leading  is  necessary.  How  far  this  theory  is  justi- 
fied would  be  much  more  evident  if  the  spiritists' 
following  were  greater  than  it  is.  Why  it  is  not 
greater  will  appear  when  we  have  considered  the 
motives  which  impel  mankind  toward  religious  and 
other  beliefs. 

It  would  be  w^ell  here  to  consider  these  motives 
and  to  preface  them  with  the  briefest  possible  ex- 
position of  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  unconscious 
mental  operations  of  humanity.  Why  is  it  that 
some  men  believe  one  thing  and  others  believe  the 
direct  contradictory  of  it?  The  answer  can  be 
only  that  they  believe  what  they  consciously  or  un- 
consciously desire  to  be  so.  "  Belief  "  is  the  same 
word  as  "  lief "  which  is  derived  from  A.  S.  leof 
(dear)  and  is  the  same  as  the  English  love.  Be- 
lieve then  fundamentally  means  to  regard  any 
statement  as  desirable,  not  as  scientifically  proven 
to  exist  in  actuality.     The  thoughtful  observer  can 


KNOWLEDGE  ABOVE  BELIEF        283 

always  notice  this  dominating  motive  in  other  peo- 
ple's beliefs,  from  the  little  child's  statement  after 
dropping  a  glass  on  the  floor  and  breaking  it :  "  It 
won't  matter  "  to  the  most  general  political  tenet, 
whether  protection  or  free  trade,  paternalism  or 
individualism.  The  little  child's  utterance  "  It 
won't  matter"  clearly  expresses  her  concern  over 
the  accident  and  her  desire  to  learn  that  no  serious 
damage  has  been  done.  The  political  orator's  logic 
is  supplied  from  the  same  source.  He  wishes  that 
protection,  or  prohibition  or  the  league  of  nations 
or  socialism  or  communism  may  win  at  the  next 
election  and  he  makes  all  the  statements  he  can 
think  of  that  say  or  appear  to  say  the  same  thing. 
His  motives  may  be  conscious  or  unconscious.  If 
he  consciously  argues  for  what  unconsciously  he 
does  not  believe  we  call  him  insincere  or  unscrup- 
ulous. If  he  argues  consciously  for  the  same  be- 
lief that  he  wishes  unconsciously  to  be  true,  he  will 
be  called  sincere,  and  his  arguments  will  have  the 
greater  influence  upon  his  hearers,  because  their 
own  unconscious  faculties  will  not  then  detect  in 
him  inconsistencies  that  would  otherwise  appear. 
But  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  his  hearers 
sometimes  come  to  hear  him  in  order  to  have  their 
own  conscious  or  unconscious  beliefs  supported, 
and  that  they  are  both  in  the  same  boat,  so  it  is  true 
everywhere  that  people  do  not  wish  to  hear  nor 
will  they  listen  attentively  to  arguments  against 
their  beliefs,  i.  e.,  their  conscious  or  unconscious 
wishes.     The  fact  is  that  they  cannot  hear  such 


284         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

arguments  or  cannot  apperceive  them  on  account 
of  their  predisposition. 

§  9.  Belief  is  not  Knowledge 

So  it  is  appropriate  to  consider  the  nature  of  the 
motives  which  impel  men  to  believe  in  survival  and 
in  communication  with  those  personalities  who,  as 
they  believe,  in  some  sjiiritual  or  other  state  sur- 
Tive  death.  With  the  actual  existence  of  any  scien- 
tific proof  of  immortality  or  survival  in  any  shape 
this  book  has  nothing  whatever  to  do.  The  point 
of  view  of  the  present  writer  is  that  neither  proof 
nor  disproof,  worthy  of  being  called  scientific,  has 
ever  been  presented.  The  presentation  of  what  is 
offered  as  a  proof  is  evidence  on  the  part  of  any  one 
presenting  it  that  he  himself  or  his  auditor  may 
have  a  doubt  about  it. 

It  is  unscientific  to  believe  or  to  doubt.  What 
we  know  we  know  positively.  I  do  not  believe  that 
all  men  are  mortal.  I  know  it,  not  alone  by  direct 
evidence  of  the  senses,  for  I  should  not  be  sure  that 
a  sleeping  man  was  not  dead  if  his  respiration  or 
circulation  were  not  perceptible  or  that  a  newly 
deceased,  but  still  warm,  person  was  not  alive.  I 
know  it  by  other  means  more  scientific  than  mere 
sense  perception. 

In  the  waves  of  spiritism  which  periodically 
break  over  society  what  instincts  are  followed  and 
what  unconscious  wishes  are  gratified,  is  the  real 
question  in  any  consideration  of  the  social  aspect 
of  spiritism.     Following  the  concepts  deduced  by 


KNOWLEDGE  ABOVE  BELIEF        285 

Freud  I  have  attempted  to  show  that  modem 
spiritism,  like  prehistoric  animism  is  but  the  pro- 
jection upon  the  external  world  of  unconscious  de- 
sires —  a  projection  which  is  perfectly  natural  and 
proceeds  on  the  pleasure-pain  principle,  but  which 
not  only  has  no  scientific  status,  but  can  have  no 
scientific  meaning.  An  idea  which  is  the  result,  on 
the  contrary  of  the  reality  principle  of  mental  ac- 
tivity is  on  a  different  level  or  in  a  different  sphere 
from  an  idea  which  is  created  by  the  pleasure-pain 
principle.  The  material  progress  of  the  present 
day  is  made  by  the  thinking  taking  place  in  one  of 
these  spheres,  the  animism  and  spiritism  of  all  ages 
is  the  inevitable  product  of  the  other  principle. 
Each  has  its  value  for  life  but  it  is  the  acme  of 
irrationality  to  attempt  to  affirm  the  truths  of  the 
latter  in  the  language  of  the  former  and  think  the 
^  values  are  the  same. 


CHAPTER  IX 

MAN^S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

§  1.  Divisions  of  Psychical  Research 

The  main  divisions  of  psychical  research  are  on 
the  one  hand  those  concerning  transmission  of  im- 
pressions from  personality  to  personality,  tele- 
pathy, etc.,  or  on  the  other  hand  those  concerning 
apparent  contradictions  of  or  exceptions  to  the 
laws  of  nature  generally  accepted  by  the  scientific 
world,  such  as  levitation  or  the  overcoming  of  the 
principle  of  gravitation,  actio  in  distans  or  the 
physical  effect  produced  on  a  material  object  with- 
out apparent  physical  cause.  The  latter  are  sub- 
jects that  in  some  cases  are  not  claimed  to  be  con- 
nected with  any  specific  human  intelligence,  for 
example,  the  unexplainable  movements  of  bricks 
and  stones  in  a  cave  in  England  reported  by  Conan 
Doyle.  All  such  phenomena,  if  they  really  exist, 
are  matters  for  physical  science  to  investigate,  and 
will  not  be  touched  upon  in  this  book.  Using  the 
definition  of  belief  developed  here,  the  present 
writer  unhesitatingly  would  declare  that  he  believes 
in  their  authenticity  but  that  he  does  not  have  sci- 
entific knowledge  of  them  nor  is  he  acquainted 
with  any  one  who  knows  them  as  facts  scientifically 
proven. 

Much  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  matter  of 

286 


MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT        287 

spirit  photographs  and  other  apparent  exceptions 
to  chemical  and  physical  laws  that  are  more  closely- 
associated  in  time  with  the  intelligence  of  an  in- 
dividual person,  such  as  the  lifting  of  tables  which 
is  said  to  occur  because  of  the  co-operation  of  sev- 
eral minds  at  once;  or,  for  example,  the  playing, 
and  translation  through  space,  of  a  mandolin  in 
the  presence  of  and  supposedly  because  of  the  voli- 
tion of  a  personality  operating  through  a  medium. 
The  present  writer  believes  in  all  these,  though  his 
conscious  wish  to  see  Nature's  laws  so  capriciously 
upset  may  not  be  so  strong  as  his  unconscious  wish 
for  the  same  irregularity. 

The  question  of  prophecy  is  one  that  is  involved 
in  metaphysics  even  for  the  spiritist,  and  Maeter- 
linck in  his  IJnhnown  Guest  has  shown  some  of  the 
absurdities  of  premonitions.  I  quote  from  that 
book  a  passage  (p.  160)  which  shows  how  the  mat- 
ter appears  to  one  who  is  so  swayed  by  his  uncon- 
scious wishes  that  he  cannot  accept  the  crassly  ma- 
terial statement  of  fact: 

"  Besides,  in  the  gloomy  regions  of  precognition, 
it  is  almost  always  a  matter  of  anticipating  a  mis- 
fortune and  very  rarely,  if  ever,  of  meeting  with  a 
pleasure  or  a  joy.  We  should  therefore  have  to 
admit  that  the  spirits  which  drag  me  to  the  fatal 
place  and  compel  me  to  do  the  act  that  will  have 
tragic  consequences  are  deliberately  hostile  to  me 
and  find  diversion  only  in  the  spectacle  of  my  suf- 
fering. What  could  those  spirits  be,  from  which 
evil  world  would  they  arise,  and  how  should  we  ex- 


288         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

plain  why  our  brothers  and  friends  of  yesterday, 
after  passing  through  the  august  and  peace-bestow- 
ing gates  of  death,  suddenly  become  transformed 
into  crafty  and  malevolent  demons?  Can  the  great 
spiritual  kingdom,  in  which  all  passions  born  of  the 
flesh  should  be  stilled,  be  but  a  dismal  abode  of 
hatred,  spite  and  envy?  It  will  perhaps  be  said 
that  they  lead  us  into  misfortune  in  order  to  purify 
us ;  but  this  brings  us  to  religious  theories  which  it 
is  not  our  intention  to  examine." 

"  Premonition,''  he  says  in  another  place  ( Op.  cit. 
134),  "  cares  but  little  for  the  human  value  of  the 
occurrence  and  puts  the  vision  of  a  number  in  a 
lottery  on  the  same  plane  as  the  most  dramatic 
death.  The  roads  by  which  it  reaches  us  are  also 
unexpected  and  varied.  Often,  as  in  the  examples 
quoted,  it  comes  to  us  in  a  dream.  Sometimes  it  is 
an  auditory  or  visual  hallucination  which  seizes 
upon  us  while  awake ;  sometimes  an  indefinable  but 
clear  and  irresistible  presentiment,  a  shapeless  but 
powerful  obsession,  an  absurd  but  imperative  cer- 
tainty which  rises  from  the  depths  of  our  inner 
darkness,  where  perhaps  lies  hidden  the  final  an- 
swer to  every  riddle." 

§  2.  Unwarranted  Inferences 

As  an  illustration  of  the  propensity  of  the  unsci- 
entific mind  to  make  unwarranted  deductions  I  will 
give  the  following  possibility  from  my  own  experi- 
ence. I  entered  one  evening  in  the  dark  the  room 
in  which  my  daughter,  three  years  old,  wias  sleeping 


MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT        289 

in  her  crib,  next  to  her  mother's  bed.  At  once  I 
was  seized  with  a  temporarily  unaccountable  idea 
that  my  wife  was  present  in  the  room,  though  I 
could  see  nothing.  I  can  understand  how  this  feel- 
ing might  have  been  construed  by  a  spiritualist  as 
a  proof  of  telepathy  or  spirit  influence  emanating 
from  my  wife  and  acting  upon  my  hypersensitive 
receptors.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  I  had  uncon- 
sciously heard  her  therd  She  stood  between  me 
and  an  open  window  thus  cutting  in  two  the  slight 
sounds  that  came  in  from  out  doors.  I  was  not 
conscious  of  hearing  her  at  first  or  of  hearing  her 
presence  in  the  form  of  interruption  of  sound  be- 
tween me  and  the  window.  I  thought  to  myself: 
"  I  believe  N.  is  down  stairs ;  how  strange  that  I 
should  have  so  strong  yet  indefinite  an  impression 
that  she  is  right  here  in  the  room  with  me.  I  know 
she  is  in  the  room.  I  cannot  see  her  or  hear  her 
or  feel  her  in  any  way  but  I  am  sure  she  is  here. 
How  can  I  account  for  the  impression?  "  Then  I 
actually  heard  her  move  as  she  adjusted  the  child's 
bedclothes.  But  there  did  not  appear  any  tele- 
pathy in  the  incident  as  it  is  quite  evident  that  I 
must  have  heard  her  unconsciously  in  both  ways 
above  mentioned  —  that  my  unconscious  heard  her, 
as  she  was  in  the  room  when  I  entered,  having  gone 
in  before  me,  and  as  I  went  into  the  room  with  con- 
scious attention  on  far  other  matters.  I  had  gone 
there  to  get  something  and  when  I  enter  a  dark 
room  in  my  house  to  get  something  my  conscious 
mind  is  full  of  mental  images  which  obliterate 


290        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

all  slight  impressions  from  outside  sources.  I  have 
visual  images  of  the  object  I  am  looking  for  and 
cutaneous  and  motor  images  of  the  various  pieces  of 
furniture  I  anticipate  touching  to  guide  myself ;  so 
that  if  I  bump  into  my  chair  in  an  unexpected  place 
I  get  a  very  strong  impression.  As  I  entered  the 
dark  room  on  the  occasion  above  noted,  therefore, 
it  is  absolutely  certain  that  my  feeling  of  my  wife's 
presence,  although  my  back  was  turned  to  her,  was 
an  unconscious  perception,  mediated  by  impressions 
of  an  auditory  quality  which  were  at  first  unable 
to  penetrate  into  my  conscious  thought-stream  be- 
cause of  the  vivid  images  of  two  sense  qualities 
already  there,  viz. :  tactual  and  auditory.  Later  the 
auditory  stimuli  which  were  continuous  from  the 
moment  of  my  entering  the  room  till  I  became  con- 
sciously aware  of  her  presence,  were  released,  as 
one  might  express  it,  into  consciousness  by  the  re- 
tirement of  the  internal  images  in  favour  of  the 
actual  auditory  sensations  which  they  had  pre- 
viously excluded. 

This  exclusion  of  actual  impressions  is  no  un- 
common thing  in  my  own  case  or  in  any  one's  else. 
It  accounts  for  the  failure  of  all  impressions  not 
attended  to,  to  occupy  the  focus  of  consciousness, 
e.  g.,  everything  in  the  field  of  vision  that  we  do  not 
see,  and  everything  in  the  ordinary  melange  of 
sounds  that  does  not  have  personal  significance  for 
us.  At  the  time  of  their  action  on  the  sense  organs 
these  stimuli  are  not  merely  si^-bconscious  in  the 
sense  of  faintly  conscious  as  are  the  objects  near 


MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT        291 

the  outside  of  the  field  of  vision  of  the  fixated 
eye,  but  they  are  totally  unconscious  or  entirely  out 
of  consciousness.  They  make  no  conscious  impres- 
sion whatever.  They  finally  become  conscious  or 
enter  consciousness  only  after  they  have  either  be- 
come related  to  some  idea  strong  enough  to  enter 
consciousness  or  have  become  so  intense  or  cumu- 
lative as  to  make  a  positive  onslaught  upon  the 
conscious  stream. 

And  in  this  connection  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  a  stimulus  which  in  some  circumstances  might 
be  strong  enough  to  constitute  a  severe  shock  to  the 
psyche,  such  as  a  bullet  wound  in  the  leg,  may  in 
other  circumstances  such  as  a  battle  not  enter  con- 
sciousness at  all  at  the  time,  and  only  do  so  later 
when  the  conscious  thought-stream,  which  by  un- 
precedented excitement  has  been  fixed  and  nar- 
rowed into  a  very  fine  thread,  so  to  speak,  is  re- 
leased, by  the  subject's  being  taken  out  of  the  bat- 
tle, or  by  the  excitement  having  otherwise  sub- 
sided. Then  the  stream  of  consciousness,  freed 
from  the  constriction  in  which  the  excitement  has 
bound  it  to  some  highly  specialized  and  definite 
stimulus,  has  the  opportunity  to  wander  over  the 
various  parts  of  the  body  and  suddenly  becomes 
aware  of  a  fierce  pain  in  the  leg. 

§  3.  Narrowing  of  Consciousness 

Just  as  the  narrowing  of  consciousness  to  a 
group  of  stimuli  of  vital  importance  will  render 
everything  except  that  group  incapable  of  enter- 


292        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

ing  consciousness,  so  will  the  opposite  action  of 
broadening  the  stream  of  consciousness  by  means  of 
muffled  external  impressions  (dimmed  lights,  soft 
music,  etc.)  render  a  great  many  more  things  than 
usual  capable  of  entering  consciousness.  In  the  ab- 
sence of  strong  external  stimuli  with  which  is  nor- 
mally associated  the  feeling  of  reality,  the  less  in- 
tense mental  states  called  images  are  enabled  to 
enter  consciousness.  The  external  conditions  of 
the  mediumistic  seance  are  as  if  planned  to  evoke 
the  free  associations  of  all  the  persons  concerned. 
These  free  associations  are  the  various  types  of 
mental  imagery.  In  addition  to  that  the  feeling  of 
reality  being  like  other  feelings  susceptible  of  being 
detached  from  one  idea  and  reattached  to  others  is 
most  likely  in  such  circumstances  to  dissociate  it- 
self from  the  monotonous  sameness  of  the  sitting 
still  and  being  quiet  of  the  seance  and  reassociate 
itself  with  the  mental  images  which  are  in  this 
physical  setting  in  a  most  favourable  situation  for 
emerging  from  the  unconscious  (where  they  exist 
in  the  form  of  indefinite  wishes  for  self-aggrandize- 
ment) and  appearing  in  consciousness  where  they 
are  immediately  seized  by  the  expectant  and  other- 
wise under-exercised  feeling  of  reality. 

It  must  not  be  considered  necessary  that  the 
thoughts,  occurring  in  the  sitters  amid  the  undi- 
rected circumstances  of  the  seance,  should  occur 
in  the  form  of  visual  images  or  of  ^auditory  images 
or  of  the  images  of  any  of  the  other  sense  qualities. 
The  thoughts  may  occur  merely  as  verbal  thoughts. 


MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT        293 

There  are  numbers  of  people  who  do  not  have  men- 
tal imagery  at  all  or  who  saj  they  do  not,  though 
they  cannot  be  accused  of  not  having  ideas.  In 
such  persons  the  idea  is  practically  only  a  symbol 
in  the  form  of  a  word  or  a  verbal  judgment  or 
proposition.  But  even  in  such  people  the  word, 
which  alone  comes  into  consciousness,  is  naturally 
backed  by  the  visual,  auditory  or  other  image. 
Those  whose  thought  is  carried  on  in  most  abstract 
and  word-symbolic  form  and  whose  train  of  thought 
is  thus  not  unlike  the  flight  of  an  aeroplane,  have 
yet  to  come  to  earth  between  flights  and  in  so  doing 
inevitably  land  on  a  concrete  basis  of  one  or  other 
sense  impression. 

It  is  quite  probable  on  the  contrary  that  the  aver- 
age human  thinks  in  terms  of  sights  and  sounds  and 
other  sensations  which  under  the  conditions  appro- 
priate for  the  revery  state  he  can  mentally  see  and 
hear,  feel  and  touch.  The  abstract  thinker  also  in- 
evitably thinks  in  terms  of  concrete  sense  qualities 
of  which,  however,  he  savs  he  is  unable  to  become 
conscious. 

The  sum-total  of  human  experience  is  first  the 
external  sensations  with  which  is  associated  the 
internal  feeling  of  reality,  and  second  the  images 
or  ideas  of  internal  origin  with  which  this  feeling 
of  reality  is  not  ordinarily  associated.  But  in 
many  people  this  reality  feeling  has  a  faint  and 
tenuous  existence  which  is  associated  with  mental 
imagery.  I  have  elsewhere  noted  (Chap.  I)  that, 
as  we  function  as  an  integrated  organic  totality  in 


294        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIEIT 

perceiving  the  impressions  made  on  us  by  external 
stimuli,  it  is  not  less  true  that  the  integration  is 
maintained  between  the  images  and  the  just  as 
specific,  though  much  fainter,  feeling  of  reality. 

It  does  not  require  much  strain  of  the  reasoning 
ability  of  any  of  us  to  see  that  the  circumstances 
of  the  mediumistic  seance  are  such  as  to  increase 
the  amount  of  reality  feeling  available  for  being 
associated  with  images  in  direct  proportion  as  the 
amount  of  reality  feeling  is  released  from  the  im- 
pressions received  through  external  stimuli.  The 
images  become  more  real  in  proportion  to  the  faint- 
ness  and  diminished  intensity  of  the  external  sen- 
sations. The  less  coming  from  outside  the  more 
will  come  from  inside  and  vice  versa. 

§  4.  Transfer  of  Reality  Feeling 

Therefore  if  the  lights  are  turned  low  actual 
sight  will  lose  its  feeling  of  reality  and  visual  im- 
ages will  attract  to  themselves  the  same  feelings  of 
reality.  If  actual  sounds  are  excluded  as  far  as 
possible,  the  auditory  images  will  appropriate  the 
residue  of  reality  feeling  remaining  from  the  actual 
sounds  made  in  the  seance  chamber  and  filtering 
into  it  from  the  out-door  world.  If  the  sitters  re- 
main motionless  for  a  half  an  hour  it  is  highly  un- 
likely that  mental  images  of  cutaneous  sensations 
will  not  arise  and  occasion  the  cold  breeze  felt 
emanating  from  a  Palladino  or  the  "  cobweb  "  sen- 
sation on  the  face,  which  is  said  to  occur  to  the 


MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT        295 

medium  when  the  materialization  phenomena  ap- 
pear. 

The -reality  of  these  things  is,  however,  only  the 
amount  of  reality  feeling  released  from  actual  ex- 
ternal sensations  which  are  diminished  as  far  as 
possible  in  the  spiritualistic  seances.  The  reality 
of  these  things  is  the  reality  feeling  transferred 
from  actual  external  sensations  to  the  images  of 
one  sense  quality  or  another.  This  transference 
is  quite  a  common  experience  as  we  have  seen  else- 
where (Chap.  I,  Sec.  6),  Transferences  of  emo- 
tions from  one  idea  to  another  are  a  universal  phe- 
nomenon. Hate  or  love  is  transferred  from  one 
object  to  another.  Liking  is  transferred  from  a 
certain  food,  milk,  normally  at  different  ages  in 
different  people,  to  another  food,  bread  or  meat  or 
what  not.  Our  tastes  in  all  mental  spheres  change 
by  virtue  of  just  such  transferences  of  emotions 
from  one  idea  to  another. 

W  Quite  similar  is  the  transference  of  the  feeling 
of  reality  from  the  actual  external  sensation  to  the 
mental  imag^  If  only  enough  of  the  reality  feel- 
ing is  transferred  from  the  external  one  to  the  men- 
tal one,  the  latter  becomes  quite  as  real  for  the  in- 
dividual in  whom  the  transference  takes  place  as 
was  the  external  impression.  All  the  external  cir- 
cumstances are  unconsciously  arranged  with  ex- 
actly this  aim  in  view  —  the  transference  of  the 
reality  feeling  from  external  impression  to  mental 
image.     The  stage  is  set  for  it  and  the  hero  is 


296         MAN^S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

bound  to  appear.  It  requires  only  the  most  favour- 
able setting  to  evoke  the  most  wonderful  results. 
The  psychical  researchers  have  set  a  trap  for  a 
spirit  and  their  expectations  would  be  sadly  dis- 
appointed if  no  spirit  appeared.  The  spirit  does 
indeed  appear  —  Man's  Unconscious  Spirit  or  the 
"spirit ''  of  one's  own  unconscious;  (Maeterlinck's 
Unknown  Guest)  — but,  expressed  in  less  dramatic 
and  more  psychological  terms,  what  appear  are  the 
mental  images  in  the  consciousness  of  the  sitter 
and  they  are  called  a  spirit,  as  they  are  immediately 
associated  with  the  floating  reality  feeling,  which 
is  quite  uncomfortable  if  it  cannot  fasten  itself  to 
anything.  Or  the  words  of  the  medium  appear,  and 
are  taken  as  the  manifestation  of  a  "  spirit." 

Man's  Unconscious  Spirit  then  is  the  only  spirit 
there  is  that,  by  scientific  methods,  can  be  proved 
to  exist  —  the  "  spirit "  or  personality  or  group 
of  them,  according  to  the  way  one  cares  to  look  at 
it.  This  is  not  saying  that  there  may  not  be  some- 
thing that  may  be  called  "  spirit,"  not  yet  demon- 
strable or  definable  by  science,  but  is  only  saying 
that  "  spirit "  as  expressed  or  described  in  the 
spiritistic  literature  does  not  fit  in  any  scientific 
category  now  known.  To  call  the  outgivings  of 
different  lower  levels  of  the  mind  of  a  single  in- 
dividual organism  spirits  is  a  comprehensible,  if 
not  an  artistic,  metaphor.  To  say  that  they  are  or 
may  become  discarnate  is  absolutely  unwarrant- 
able. To  attribute  to  them  powers  over  matter 
is  infinitely  worse  from  the  purely  scientific  view- 


MAN^S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT        297 

point,  however  beautiful  and  desirable  it  may  be 
from  any  other. 

This  then  is  all  Man's  Unconscious  Spirit  means 
or  can  mean ;  that  the  memories  in  the  apparently 
illimitable  storehouse  of  the  unconscious  of  a  single 
individual  may  be  awakened  and  brought  into  con- 
sciousness in  systems  that  resemble  the  integrations 
of  the  conscious  life  of  almost  any  other  individual 
human ;  that  these  systems  have  been  so  long  buried 
in  the  apparent  oblivion  of  the  unconscious  as  to  be 
unrecognizable  to  consciousness;  that,  being  un- 
recognizable they  are  taken  as  the  thoughts  of  other 
personalities;  that  the  apparent  continuity  of  the 
conscious  ego  is  such  that  these  other  personalities 
are  rejected  as  being  the  same  as  the  conscious  ego 
now  re-experiencing  them;  and  that  these  foreign 
seeming  thought  systems,  that  are  nevertheless  part 
and  parcel  of  the  organism  of  the  ego  in  question, 
are  thereupon  regarded  as  the  personalities  now 
surviving  of  other  ego-organisms  that  may  have  dis- 
integrated yesterday  or  thousands  of  years  ago. 

§  5.  Relativity  of  Images 

This  relativity  principle  between  the  power  of 
internal  images  and  external  stimuli  should  make 
the  psychical  researcher,  if  he  took  it  into  account, 
very  careful  about  the  evidence  of  the  senses  at 
any  seance  or  in  any  circumstances  where  he  is 
looking  for  the  unusual.  Under  the  circumstances 
recommended  for  the  "  formation  "  of  a  "  circle  "  of 
spiritists  are  that  the  room  should  be  quiet  and  not 


298        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

brightly  lighted,  in  a  high  and  dry  air,  and  that 
flowers  should  be  in  the  room  "  as  their  presence  '' 
(I  quote  from  a  manual  for  would-be  spiritists)  "  is 
said  to  attract  spirits  in  a  peculiar  manner."  ^ 

It  is  a  common  fact  of  even  conscious  psychology 
that  odours  have  a  very  high  associative  power,  and 
there  are  few  flowers  without  fragrance  of  some 
sort.  I  have  given  elsewhere  (Chap.  V,  Sec.  16)  an 
account  of  the  power  that  the  odour  of  a  small  blot 
of  ink  had  to  break  into  my  consciousness  while  I 
was  reading  a  book  one  summer  evening.  All  these 
recommendations  for  forming  a  spiritistic  circle  of 
people  are  such  as  would  lower  the  bars  ordinarily 
up  against  impressions  of  faint  intensity  on  the  one 
hand  and  on  the  other  also  permit  the  images  that 
at  such  times  crowd  into  the  stream  of  conscious- 
ness to  rank  well  in  intensity,  i.  e.,  to  be  reasso- 
ciated  with  the  reality  feeling  that  normally  accom- 
panies the  actual  physical  stimuli. 

Therefore  the  unconscious  wish,  which,  through 
the  mechanism  of  projection  elsewhere  described, 
launches  upon  the  external  world  the  qualities  of 
sense  that  constitute  its  chief  or  special  gratifica- 
tion —  the  unconscious  wish  is  under  such  circum- 
stances much  more  likely  to  be  in  a  position  to  ex- 
ternalize itself  in  a  mental  image  which  will  be 
taken  for  a  real  external  perception.  Many  of  the 
persons  taking  part  in  spiritistic  seances  are  not  in 
the  least  introspective  and  the  attention  to  images 

1  Carrington :     Your    Psychic    Powers    and    How    to    Develop 
Them.    N.  Y.,  1920. 


.     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT        299 

which  is  the  habit  of  introspection  is  an  absolutely 
new  experience  for  them.  Therefore  it  would  be  a 
very  unsafe  thing  to  take  their  testimony  as  to 
what  they  saw  or  heard.  It  would  require  for  the 
best  evidence  a  person  who  had  made  a  thorough 
study  of  his  mental  imagery,  and  who  could  be 
trusted  to  differentiate  between  his  images  and  his 
sensations.  This  requisition  will  be  taken  up  in 
greater  detail  in  Chapter  X. 

Another  spiritistic  writer  who  better  under- 
stands the  scientific  requirements  of  the  situation  is 
Mr.  J.  Arthur  Hill  who  in  his  Spiritualism  (pp. 
127,  128)  says:  "  One  of  the  principal  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  admitting  an  element  of  supemormality 
—  whether  telepathy,  clairvoyance  or  communica- 
tion from  the  dead  —  is  the  unknown  reach  of  sub- 
liminal memory.  .  .  .  Great  care  is  necessary  as  to 
what  we  say  to  sensitives  who  are  helping  us  in  ex- 
perimentation, also  close  knowledge  of  their  lives, 
their  reading,  their  associations  in  order  to  esti- 
mate the  probability  or  improbability  of  this  or 
that  piece  of  knowledge  ever  having  reached  them 
through  normal  channels."  This  is  the  proper  at- 
titude but  it  is  not  strong  enough,  due  probably  to 
the  writer's  being  unacquainted  with  the  extreme 
reach  of  the  psychoanalytic  sounding  line  which,  as 
I  have  elsewhere  mentioned,  has  brought  up  mem- 
ories after  thirty  years  of  oblivion  and  made  them 
live  with  dramatic  vividness  in  the  consciousness 
of  the  person  being  analysed. 


CHAPTER  X 

SCIENTIFIC   INVESTIGATIONS 

§  1.  The  Personal  Factor  in  Science 

When  we  look  at  the  progress  that  has  been 
made  in  science  and  think  of  the  fact  that  this 
advance  has  come,  in  spite  of  the  many  antagonisms 
between  men  of  science,  we  are  impressed  more  and 
more  with  the  fact  that  the  personal  element  has 
existed  in  all  the  controversies  about  various  the- 
ories of  mind  and  matter,  and  considering  this 
strife  about  precedence  and  the  professional  jeal- 
ousy and  the  envy,  and  the  acrimony  with  which 
some  have  defended  their  own  and  opposed  others' 
theories,  we  cannot  but  regret  that  this  has  been 
so,  and  we  cannot  but  wish  that  this  emotional  life, 
this  introjection  and  projection  of  feelings  had  not 
been  there  to  diminish  the  value  of  the  concrete  re- 
sults obtained.  They  would  have  been  so  much 
greater  if  there  had  not  been  so  much  personal 
friction  involved  in  getting  them  —  a  deflection  of 
libido  which  has  greatly  detracted  from  the  amount 
and  quality  of  the  results. 

This  lessening  of  the  amount  of  human  energy 
devoted  to  strictly  scientific  pursuits  due  to  the 
amount  of  it  wasted  on  controversial  matters,  is 
something  entirely  due  to  the  unconscious  habit  of 

300 


SCIENTIFIC  INVESTIGATIONS        301 

all  men,  including  men  of  science,  to  think  accord- 
ing to  the  pleasure-pain  principle  instead  of  the 
reality  principle.  It  is  the  operation  of  the  former 
solely  that  causes  polemics  and  controversies.  And 
I  cannot  but  think  that  much  of  the  energy  devoted 
to  psychical  research  is  actuated  or  diverted  into 
that  direction  by  the  fancied  pleasure  it  would  be  to 
prov^  scientifically  the  extra-corporeal  existence  of 
personal  consciousness.  The  psychical  researchers 
virtually  say  to  scientists,  "  We  admit  that  you  say 
that  there  is  no  proof,  but  we  are  going  to  take 
your  own  methods  and  show  you  that  you  could 
have  demonstrated  this  yourselves  long  before. 
The  very  principles  you  say  are  unquestionably 
against  our  evidence  we  will  use  to  show  that  you 
are  mistaken.'' 

In  this  connection  I  should  like  to  quote  S. 
Ferenczi  {Contributions  to  Psycho-Analysis,  p. 
217).  He  says: 

"Unconscious  affects  (emotions),  however,  may 
falsify  the  truth  not  only  in  psychology  but  also  in 
all  other  sciences.  .  .  .  Every  one  who  works  in 
Science  should  first  submit  himself  to  a  methodical 
psychoanalysis. 

"  The  advantages  that  would  accrue  to  Science 
from  this  deepened  self-knowledge  on  the  part  of 
the  scientist  are  evident.  An  enormous  amount  of 
power  for  work,  which  is  now  wasted  on  infantile 
controversies  and  priority  disputes,  could  be  put  at 
the  disposal  of  more  serious  aims.  The  danger  of 
projecting  into  Science  as  a  generally  valid  theory 


v/^ 


302        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

peculiarities  of  one's  own  personality  (Freud) 
would  be  much  less.  The  hostile  manner  also  in 
which,  even  nowadays,  new  unusual  ideas  or  sci- 
fentific  propositions  are  received  when  put  forward 
by  unknown  authors,  unsupported  by  any  authori- 
tative personality,  would  give  way  to  a  more  un- 
prejudiced testing  by  reality.  I  will  go  so  far  as 
to  maintain  that,  if  this  rule  of  self-analysis  were 
observed,  the  development  of  the  various  sciences, 
which  today  is  an  endless  series  of  energy-wasting 
revolutions  and  reactions,  would  pursue  a  much 
smoother  yet  a  more  profitable  and  accelerated 
course." 

As  an  illustration  of  this  I  would  mention  the 
history  of  homeopathy,  during  which  there  has  de- 
veloped an  enormous  amount  of  scientific  observa- 
tion on  the  mental  and  physical  effects  of  various 
drugs  on  the  human  system,  a  mass  of  material 
invaluable  to  humanity,  which,  partly  due  to  the 
opposition  of  the  "  regular  "  school  of  medicine,  is 
still  undigested  and  practically  unavailable.  But 
it  is  also  partly  due  to  the  extravagant  claims  made 
by  the  homeopathists  themselves,  claims  paralleled 
in  their  inclusiveness  by  osteopathists,  by  chiro- 
practors, by  mental  healers  and  by  Christian  Sci- 
entists, all  of  whom  have  discovered  a  grain  of 
truth,  but  have  presented  it  in  such  a  way  as  to 
antagonize  rather  than  to  gain  the  sympathy  of 
others,  who  are  with  equal  zeal,  concerned  in  the 
same  pursuit  of  studying,  in  their  own  narrow  way, 
to  ameliorate  human  ills. 


SCIENTIFIC  INVESTIGATIONS       303 

§  2.  Exclusion  of  Unconscious  Factor 
So  it  is  from  this  point  of  view  no  more  than  rea- 
sonable to  point  out  to  the  psychical  researchers  a 
source  of  error  which  perhaps  they  have  overlooked 
and  to  say  that  until  this  is  removed  they  will 
hardly  succeed  in  convincing  those  whom  it  is  most 
to  their  interest  to  convince. 

If  a  medium  should  be  adequately  analysed  by  a 
thoroughly  scientific  analyst  of  the  Freudian  school 
and  after  years  of  patient  investigation  on  the  part 
of  the  analyst  and  training  and  study  on  the  part 
of  the  medium,  after  this  really  scientific  investiga- 
tion, the  medium  still  could  produce  "  levitations  " 
and  "  spirit ''  photographs,  and  was  not  himself 
convinced  that  all  his  conscious  and  unconscious 
utterances  emanated  directly  or  indirectly  from  his 
own  unconscious,  then  and  not  until  then  would  sci- 
ence be  justified  in  giving  serious  attention  to  what 
now  seem  to  be  exceptions  to  universally  valid  laws 
of  matter.  But  this  has  never  been  done,  and  it  is 
an  essential  requisition  for  anything  that  could 
rightly  be  called  a  scientific  proof. 

There  are  perfectly  good  reasons  why  this  has 
not  been  sought  by  the  medium  himself,  for  what- 
ever psychical  peculiarities  he  has,  whether  they  be 
normal  or  abnormal  qualities,  are  never  such  as  to 
cause  him  much  friction  with  his  environment.  By 
the  people  anxious  for  spiritual  aggrandizement  the 
medium  is  treated  with  honour.  From  such  people 
he  receives  a  rich  reward  for  his  hypersensibility,) 


/ 


304         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

whicli  if  not  directly  pecuniary  is  still  material 
value  (e.  g.,  Home).     I  have  naturally  no  criticism 
to  make  of  the  mediums  who  sincerely  believe  in 
their  powers.     The  frauds  have  been  detected  in 
goodly  numbers,  and  it  is  to  the  credit  of  the  So- 
cieties for  Psychical  Research  that  they  have  in- 
stantly repudiated  a  medium  when  they  have  found 
him  guilty  of  any  indirection.     But  the  sincere  and 
honest  mediums  who  take  themselves  most  seriously 
and  never  consciously  resort  to  any  ruse,  are  quite 
-'    as  likely  to  be  self-deceived  as  are  their  adherents, 
I    because  we  are  all  alike  swayed  by  our  unconscious 
-  wishes  for  aggrandizement  of  the  ego.     Only  the 
smallest  possible  number  of  us  at  present  are  in  a 
position  definitely  to  be  able  to  state  that  our  utter- 
ances or  the  visions  we  see  or  the  phantom  sounds 
we  hear  are  not  the  results  of  the  activities  of  our 
^  own  unconscious  minds. 

Therefore  I  should  add  to  the  requirements  for 
really  scientific  proof  of  spiritistic  phenomena  the 
further  requirement  that,  if  the  aqtivities  of  the 
unconscious  are  to  be  rigidly  excluded  in  the  proof 
of  spiritism  in  any  of  its  manifestations,  the  in- 
vestigators themselves  will  have  to  be  analysed.  It 
will  be  as  necessary  for  truly  scientific  work  as 
that  not  only  the  person  operated  on  in  a  surgical 
operation,  but  even  the  doctors  and  nurses  be  thor- 
oughly antisepticised.  But  while  I  might  have 
hesitated  somewhat  in  making  the  negative  state- 
ment that  no  medium  has  ever  been  analysed  up  to 
the  point  of  remembering  and  recognizing  all  his 


SCIENTIFIC  INVESTIGATIONS       305 

former  sense  experiences,  I  shall  have  no  hesita- 
tion whatever  in  asserting  that  no  medium  has  ever 
been  analysed  and  after  his  analysis  been  witnessed 
by  a  group  of  thoroughly  analysed  spectators.  In 
fact  I  am  almost  certain  that  at  the  present  time 
such  a  situation  is  a  physical  impossibility.  For 
as  thorough  an  analysis  of  an  individual  human  as 
has  ever  been  made  to  date,  several  hundred  sit- 
tings are  necessary,  and  at  the  rate  of  three  or  four 
a  week  the  whole  proceeding  for  one  individual 
might  take  a  year  or  two.  A  skilled  analyst  there- 
fore would  have  to  spend  a  couple  of  years  devot- 
ing all  his  time  to  the  research  work  on  the  uncon- 
scious of  the  medium  and  the  four  or  five  specta- 
tors who  were  going  to  witness  his  performances 
subsequent  to  his  and  their  analysis.  And  I  am 
sure  such  thoroughgoing  preparations  for  scientific 
proof  of  spiritism  have  never  been  carried  out. 

But  they  would  have  to  be,  in  order  to  afford 
strictly  scientific  proof  of  spiritistic  phenomena. 
To  carry  out  these  specifications  to  the  letter,  viz. : 
to  take  the  best  believed  medium  on  record  and  pre- 
pare him  by  thorough  psychoanalytic  treatment  and 
to  train  by  a  similar  method  four  or  five  competent 
witnesses  to  inspect  his  mediumistic  performances, 
if  any,  after  his  analysis,  would  be  the  only  con- 
ceivable way  to  exclude  the  unconscious  factor  in 
the  process. 

And  even  these  extensive  precautions,  not  against 
fraud,  but  against  self-deception  on  the  part  of  both 
medium  and  witnesses,  would  be  a  no  more  labori- 


306        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

ous  procedure  than  many  of  those  scientific  methods 
which  have  produced  things  of  every  day  use  from 
666  to  the  mazda  lamp.  I  cannot  say  that  scien- 
tists who  have  performed  Herculean  labours  in  pure 
and  applied  science  have  not  expressed  themselves 
as  believing  in  spiritism,  but  I  think  I  can  justly 
/"^say  that  such  scientists  have  failed  to  apply  to 
psychical  research  work  the  same  year-long  and 
indefatigable  persistence  that  they  have  given  to 
material  things. 

In  this  we  clearly  see  the  activity  of  the  uncon- 
scious wish  on  the  part  of  the  scientists  who  have 
won  their  laurels  by  making  investigations  into  the 
constitution  of  matter.  They  have  not  come  out 
saying  that  their  researches  into  matter  convinced 
them  of  the  existence  of  spirit  in  order  to  explain 
matter.  But  they  have  left  their  laboratories  or 
doffed  their  laboratory  habit  of  thought  and  en- 
tertained mediums  in  their  laboratories,  remitting 
for  a  while  their  strictly  scientific  work  and  yielded 
finally  in  their  old  age  to  the  constant  and  increas- 
ing pressure  of  the  unconscious  wishes  of  them- 
selves and  their  acquaintances.  We  cannot  but  be- 
lieve that  they  would  not  have  come  out  for  spirit- 
ualism if  they  had  not  in  a  sense  come  out  of  their 
laboratories  for  relaxation,  fatigued,  and  naturally 
so,  after  a  lifetime  of  unremitting  labour.  It  is  a 
significant  fact,  too,  that  some  of  the  most  prom- 
inent advocates  of  spiritistic  phenomena  have  been 
doubters  in  their  youth,  like  Conan  Doyle,  and  have 

% 

i 


SCIENTIFIC  INVESTIGATIONS       307 

yielded  to  the  pressure  of  their  own  and  others'  un-  i 
conscious  in  later  life. 

All  the  positive  advances  in  and  contributions 
to  science  have  involved  not  less,  but  more  compli- 
cated research  than  that  outlined  above  as  a  pre- 
requisite for  the  scientific  proof  of  spiritism.  To 
each  one  of  countless  scientific  discoveries  and  in- 
ventions years  of  toil  on  the  part  of  one  or  two  men 
have  been  devoted.  To  the  present  condition  of 
the  automobile,  the  aeroplane,  the  telephone,  the 
wireless,  years  of  co-ordinated  endeavour  of  many 
men  have  contributed,  and  the  result  is  definite  and 
tangible  and  familiar  —  not  a  matter  of  belief  but 
an  actual  fact.  The  statements  of  the  believers  in 
spiritualism  have  no  such  backing.  For  the  appro- 
priately constituted  mind  belief  is  not  only  easy,  it 
is  inevitable.  "  Thou  reasonest  well,  Plato !  It 
must  be  so."  But  we  must  not  forget  for  a  moment 
that  belief  is  the  verbal  or  act  expression  of  the 
unconscious  wish. 

§  3.  Belief  a  Wish 

In  order  to  make  this  clear  if  possible  we  shall 
have  to  consider  somewhat  at  length  the  origin  of 
belief  in  the  unconscious  and  the  nature  of  the  un- 
conscious itself  as  it  is  manifested  in  the  percep- 
tions and  actions,  not  merely  of  the  mentally  dis- 
ordered but  of  those  who  are  absolutely  normal  and 
wholesome  healthy  humans. 

We  all  believe  what  we  unconsciously  wish.     The 


308         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIKIT 

belief  expressed  consciously  in  word  or  deed  is  the 
perceptible  expression  of  the  imperceptible  impulse. 
For  our  beliefs  we  do  not  need  and  do  not  want 
any  scientific  proof  no  matter  how  much  we  may 
happen  to  say  we  do,  or  say  that  we  cannot  believe 
what  is  not  proved  or  patent  to  the  senses. 

A  consideration  of  the  origin  of  beliefs,  whether 
religious  or  political,  psychological  or  philological, 
takes  us  into  the  study  of  the  nature  and  origin  in 
the  individual  mind  of  ideas  themselves.     I  think 
no  distinction  need  be  made  for  psychological  pur- 
poses between  ideas  and  things,  for  to  the  mind 
everything  is  an  idea  and  every  idea  is  a  thing. 
We  have  sensations  from  our  internal  organs  to 
which  I  have  elsewhere  given  the  name  of  "  reality 
feelings ''  sensations  which  we  experience  together 
with  certain  so-called  "  external "  senses  such  as 
sight,  hearing,  tactual  impressions,  pressure,  mo- 
tion, smell,  etc.     Those  "  reality  feelings  "  give  us 
our  orientation,  sometimes  somewhat  defective  to  be 
sure,  in  the  world  of  external  reality.     What  ac- 
tually exists,  the  thing  in  itself,  concerns  us  only 
as  we  happen  to  react  to  it,  and  frequently  makes 
on  us  no  impression  at  all  of  which  we  are  aware. 
But  we  caji  infer  from  our  own   mental   states 
(sights,  sounds,  etc.,  feelings  and  emotions),  that 
impressions  have  been  made  on  our  bodies  by  forces 
of  which  we  are  not  and  never  could  become  directly 
conscious.     Furthermore,  the  fusions  and  colliga- 
tions of  impressions  made  through  the  avenues  of 
sense  are  entities  that  for  the  most  part  never  enter 


SCIENTIFIC  INVESTIGATIONS       309 

consciousness  at  all.  We  frequently  move  our  en- 
tire body  automatically,  and  particularly  when  the 
stream  of  consciousness  is  narrowed  by  deep  emo- 
tions, or  great  excitement,  and  in  these  situations 
we  are  led  and  directed  by  ideas  or  groups  of  ideas 
that  are  not  then  in  and  sometimes  do  not  sub- 
sequently enter,  consciousness. 

Now  I  am  aware  that,  in  saying  as  I  did  above 
that  forces  of  which  we  are  not  and  never  can  be- 
come conscious  are  having  an  effect  on  us,  I  am  lay- 
ing myself  open  to  the  charge  of  admitting  spirit- 
ual forces.  The  forces  that  work  upon  us  below  our 
conscious  level  may  be,  it  will  be  said,  the  disem- 
bodied spirits  by  which  the  ether  is  so  copiously 
populated.  How  can  I  prove  that  is  not  the  case? 
But  I  might  reply  quite  as  reasonably :  How  can  it 
be  proved  that  the  forces  which  produce  these  sub- 
liminal effects  are  not  forces  inherent  in  the  men- 
tal content  of  the  individual  in  question?  Why 
may  they  not  just  as  plausibly  be  the  ideas  gen- 
erated, to  speak  figuratively,  by  the  memories  of 
past  experiences  lying  apparently  dormant  in  the 
mind,  but  yet,  as  is  abundantly  proved  by  psycho- 
analytic research,  quite  as  active  and  vigorous  as 
if  they  had  entered  consciousness.  For  we  are  not 
to  imagine  that  consciousness  alone  gives  life  to 
ideas  and  fusions  of  thoughts.  An  unconscious 
idea  may  be  quite  as  lively  as  a  conscious  one,  it 
may  grow  and  develop  from  year  to  year  and  never 
once  enter  consciousness.  That  an  idea  occurs  to 
consciousness  shows  that  it  has  acquired  in  the 


310        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

mind  enough  force  of  its  own  to  push  its  way  up- 
ward, taking  concrete  sense-impression  form  as  it 
emerges.  But  the  occurrence  of  an  idea  to  my 
mind  is  no  proof  that  it  has  come  ready-made  from 
any  other  intelligence,  bodied  or  disembodied.  It 
may  quite  as  well  be  the  product  of  my  own  mind 
as  that  of  any  other  person's,  and  is  much  more 
likely  to  be  my  own  thought  composed  in  my  own 
unconscious  than  it  is  to  be  an  idea  transmitted  by 
some  disembodied  spirit. 

It  is  thus  evident  that  the  source  of  any  idea  has 
to  be  scientifically  investigated  with  the  more  care, 
the  greater  its  possibilities  are  of  being  derived 
either  from  the  unconscious  of  the  particular  per- 
son having  it  or  from  some  external  source  beyond 
the  ordinary  distance  from  which  any  average  im- 
pression is  made  on  the  sensorium  by  the  external 
world. 

If  I  can  show  that  the  unconscious  is  an  inex- 
haustible treasure-house  of  ideas  of  all  possible 
kinds,  combinations  and  permutations  of  ideas  that 
have  once  been  sense  impressions  received  from  the 
external  world,  I  shall  in  so  doing  show  that  the 
origin  of  ideas  purporting  to  come  from  disem- 
bodied spirits  may  quite  as  well  be  within  the  ego 
as  without  it. 

All  the  more,  then,  shall  we  have  to  have  it  finally 
decided  that  such  and  such  an  idea  could  not  pos- 
sibly have  come  from  the  unconscious  before  we  can 
say  that  we  have  scientific  proof  of  its  extraneous 
origin. 


SCIENTIFIC  INVESTIGATIONS       311 

The  unconscious  is  conceived  as  an  absolutely 
faithful  record  of  all  impressions  of  the  individual 
from  his  birth  ( or  even  before  his  birth  —  even  in 
his  intra-uterine  existence)  on  to  the  time  when  the 
idea  in  question  pops  into  his  head  supposedly  for 
the  first  time. 

If  the  medium  were  analysed  he  would  then  have 
it  made  clear  to  him  that  all  the  trance  utterances 
are  but  emanations  from  his  own  mind.  The  fash- 
ion is  for  the  medium  to  repudiate  this  idea,  because 
at  present  the  fashion  is  to  pay  big  rewards  or  hom- 
age to  mediums.  Therefore  I  say  that  the  medium 
or  any  person  through  whom  the  manifestations  of 
external  "  spirits ''  are  made  have  never  been  ade- 
quately analysed  to  show  the  actual  origin  of  the 
ideas  issuing  in  the  seance.  I  affirm  that  this 
origin  could  be  found.  Also  that  it  has  not  been 
found  because  the  personal  motives  against  having 
it  discovered  are  so  strong,  emanating,  as  they  do, 
from  the  same  source  as  the  trance  utterances. 

But  two  approximations  to  the  analysis  of  a  me- 
dium have  been  made.  One  of  these  had  at  the 
time  of  this  writing  not  been  printed  and  is  there- 
fore unavailable  in  its  scientific  form.  The  out- 
lines of  it  are,  however,  suggested  in  what  follows. 
The  other  is  the  case  of  Elsa  Barker. 

§  4.  Dr.  Q's  Case 

The  nearest  approach  to  the  analysis  of  a  medium 
that  has  at  the  same  time  the  merit  of  being  truly 
scientific  is  the  following  one  of  Dr.  N.  Q.     It  is 


^ 


312         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

naturally  quite  negative  in  results,  from  the  spirit- 
istic point  of  view. 

A  young  woman  becoming  interested  in  the  ouija 
board,  when  the  recent  fad  struck  her  town,  amused 
herself  with  it  as  the  others  did.  She  was  of  an 
aristocratic  family,  among  the  possessions  of  which 
handed  down  from  some  ancestors  was  a  copper 
tray  about  which  there  was  a  tradition  that  in  some 
way  its  integrity  was  connected  with  the  welfare 
of  the  family  itself.  Miss  X.  put  the  question  to 
the  ouija  board,  "  What  shall  I  do  with  the  tray? 
Shall  I  put  it  in  storage?  "  and  got  the  reply,  "  No.'' 

It  should  be  noted  that  this  story  covers  quite  a 
period  of  time  and  that,  after  this  interesting  reply 
of  the  ouija  board.  Miss  X.  learned  automatic  writ- 
ing in  which  she  became  skilled  enough  to  dispense 
with  the  ouija  board  entirely. 

Inquiring  who  the  intelligence  was  who  was  com- 
municating, the  hand  wrote  "  Rob  Taylor,''  and 
said  that  he  lived  at  the  Yorktown  Hotel.  To  test 
this  Miss  X.  called  up  the  hotel  and  to  her  great 
surprise  found  that  they  knew  him.  He  was  a  well 
known  craft  worker  in  metal  and  had  lived  there; 
but  had  recently  died.  She  continued  her  auto- 
matic writing. 

Asking  the  "  spirit "  of  Mr.  Taylor  if  he  could 
not  give  her  still  more  proof  of  his  continued  ex- 
istence by  appearing  in  visible  form  before  her,  her 
hand  wrote,  "  Look  in  the  dark  doorway  on  the 
other  side  of  the  room."  She  did  so  and,  to  her 
amazement,  she  clearly  saw  a  tall. figure  with  soft 


SCIENTIFIC  INVESTIGATIONS        313 

hat  and  Van  Dyke  beard,  and  with  a  cape  on  —  a 
very  artistic  looking  person. 

Being  of  a  truly  scientific  mind  she  tested  this 
vision  by  going  to  a  friend  of  Taylor's  who,  she 
knew,  took  a  great  many  photographs,  and  asked 
him  if  he  had  any  of  Taylor. 

"  I  think  so,"  he  said,  and  produced  a  pile  of 
prints.     "  See  if  you  can  pick  him  out.'' 

She  turned  them  over  one  by  one  and  finally  held 
up  one.  "  This  is  the  man  I  saw  in  my  vision  in  the 
doorway." 

"  That's  Rob  Taylor,"  said  his  friend. 

She  went  home  and  continued  her  automatic 
writing.  She  asked  Mr.  Taylor  what  she  should 
do  with  the  family  copper  tray  in  order  best  to  pre- 
serve it.     Through  her  hand  he  said,  "  Colour  it !  " 

"  But,"  she  said,  "  I  know  nothing  about  colour- 
ing copper.     How  shall  I  go  about  it?" 

"  Go,"  the  hand  wrote,  "  to  the  drug  store  and 
buy  an  ounce  of  powder  that  I  always  used  for  such 
purposes.  It  is  called  Liv  .  .  ."  The  rest  of  this 
word  was  illegible. 

She  went  to  the  drug  store,  asking  if  Mr.  Taylor 
was  not  in  the  habit  of  buying  some  of  his  materials 
there. 

"  Yes,  madam,  can  we  supply  you  with  any- 
thing? " 

"  I  wanted  to  get  an  ounce  of  the  powder  such 
as  Mr.  Taylor  used  for  colouring  copper  trays." 

The  clerk  immediately  suggested  sal  ammoniac. 

As  he  did  so  Miss  X.  was  distinctly  aware  that 


314        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

the  spirit  of  Rob  Taylor  was  there,  standing  by  her 
in  the  drug  store  before  the  counter,  and  indicating 
in  some  mysterious  manner  that  this  was  not  the 
proper  chemical. 

She  said:  "Is  this  the  chemical  he  always  used? 
Did  he  not  sometimes  use  some  other?  " 

"  Well,  yes.  Come  to  think  of  it,  he  did  some- 
times use  a  very  peculiar  chemical.  I'll  get  some 
if  we  have  it.     It  isn't  often  called  for." 

In  a  moment  he  returned  with  another  package. 
It  was  labelled  "  Liver  of  Sulphur." 

These  automatic  writings  and  the  testing  out  of 
them  went  to  the  extent  that  Miss  X.'s  friends  be- 
gan to  think  her  quite  uncanny.  One  of  them,  a 
Mrs.  Y.,  also  evincing  a  truly  scientific  spirit,  got 
her  to  consent  to  test  the  thing  out  further,  and 
with  the  help  of  the  best  brains  in  the  country,  so 
she  went  to  Dr.  N.  Q. 

He  hypnotized  her  and  in  the  hypnosis  she  re- 
called three  separate  incidents  which  she  had  en- 
tirely forgotten,  and  gave  Dr.  Q.  a  detailed  account 
of  them. 

The  first  was  the  memory  of  reading  in  a  news- 
paper about  the  death  of  Rob  Taylor.  The  obit- 
uary gave  his  picture  and  told  that  he  was  a  very 
successful  art  worker,  also  that  he  lived  in  the 
Yorktown  Hotel. 

The  second  was  the  memory  of  an  occasion  when 
she  had  herself  gone  one  evening  with  friends  to 
dine  at  the  Yorktown.  In  the  lobby  they  noticed  a 
very  distinguished,  looking  individual  with  long; 


SCIENTIFIC  INVESTIGATIONS        315 

cape,  Van  Dyke  beard  and  soft  felt  hat.  She  asked 
one  of  her  companions  who  that  man  was. 

"  It's  Rob  Taylor,  the  craft  worker.  I  thought 
you  knew  him," 

The  third  memory  was  of  some  copper  work  done 
in  the  convent  school  where  Miss  X.  went  as  a  girl. 
She  remembered  quite  clearly  that  one  of  the  chem- 
icals used  in  the  work  they  did  there  was  labelled 
Liver  of  Sulphur. 

Miss  X.'s  automatic  writing  was  thus  entirely 
explained.  Every  bit  of  information  that  she  got 
from  the  "  spirit "  and  that  was  so  dramatically 
corroborated,  was  in  her  own  unconscious  mental 
storehouse  and  was  released  through  her  automatic 
writing.  Every  bit  of  it  was  accounted  for. 
Among  other  things  Dr.  Q.  looked  for  and  found 
the  very  newspaper  account  of  Rob  Taylor's  death. 

Surely  it  is  a  scientific  necessity  to  exclude  the 
unconscious  factor. 

§  5.  Elsa  Barker 
This  lady  says  that  in  1912  while  in  Paris  she 
was  "  strongly  impelled  to  take  up  a  pencil  and 
write,  though  what  I  was  to  write  about  I  had  no 
idea.  Yielding  to  the  impulse,  my  hand  was  seized 
as  if  from  the  outside,  and  a  remarkable  message 
of  a  personal  nature  came,  followed  by  the  signa- 
ture ^  X.'  "  This  man  was  known  to  have  died  in 
Los  Angeles  February  21,  1912,  David  P.  Hatch 
being  his  name.  He  was  supposed  to  be  the  "  con- 
trol"  in  the  writing  of  two  volumes :  Letters  from  a 


316         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

Living  Dead  Man  (1914)  and  War  Letters  from  the 
Living  Dead  Man  (1915). 

In  the  introduction  to  the  War  Letters  which 
were  written  in  1915,  about  the  time  when  she  sajs 
she  first  became  interested  in  psychoanalysis,  she 
writes  as  follows : 

"  When  made  aware  of  the  presence  of  ^  X '  I 
take  a  pencil  and  a  notebook,  as  any  other  amanu- 
ensis would,  and  by  an  effort  of  will,  now  easy  from 
long  practice,  I  still  the  activity  of  my  objective 
mind,  until  there  is  no  thought  or  shadow  of  a 
thought  in  it.  Then  into  the  brain  itself  come  the 
words,  which  flow  out  without  conscious  effort  at 
the  point  of  the  pencil.  It  is  exactly  as  if  I  heard 
the  dictation  with  a  single  auditory  instrument, 
like  a  small  and  very  sensitive  sphere,  in  the  centre 
of  the  brain. 

"  I  never  know  at  the  beginning  of  a  sentence 
how  it  will  end.  I  never  know  whether  the  sen- 
tence I  am  writing  will  be  the  last  or  if  two  thou- 
sand words  will  follow  it.  I  simply  write  on,  in  a 
state  of  voluntary  negativity,  until  the  impression 
of  personality  described  above  leaves  suddenly. 
Then  no  more  words  come.  .  .  . 

"  The  question  will  naturally  arise  in  the  mind  of 
the  sceptical  reader  (it  has  in  mine  ^),  whether  my 
own  subconscious  mind  has  not  itself  dictated  the 
following  War  Letters  from  the  Living  Dead  Man 
in  the  attempt  to  explain  a  world  tragedy  which 
would  have  seemed  impossible  two  years  ago. 

1  Dated  Sept.  15,  1915. 


SCIENTIFIC  INVESTIGATIONS       317 

^^  But  from  my  long  experience  in  writing  for  X 
and  from  the  fact  that  during  two  years  I  had  not 
written  for  him  except  on  two  or  three  unimportant 
occasions,  though  often  thinking  of  him,  and  from 
my  acquired  habit  of  minute  obser\^ation  of  super- 
normal phenomena,  I  now  feel  safe  in  assuming 
that  I  know  the  difference  between  the  actual  pres- 
ence of  *  X '  and  my  own  imagination  of  him,  my 
reminiscence  of  him,  or  even  the  suggestion  of  his 
presence  from  another's  mind. 

"...  I  freely  welcome  every  logical  argument 
against  the  belief  that  these  letters  are  what  they 
purport  to  be;  but  placing  those  arguments  in  op- 
position to  the  evidence  which  I  have  of  the  gen- 
uineness of  them,  the  affirmations  outweigh  the 
denials,  and  I  accept  them." 

In  1919  appeared  the  Last  Letters  from  the  Liv- 
ing Dead  Man,  in  the  introduction  to  which  the  au- 
tomatist  says  that  for  a  year  she  has  studied  psy- 
choanalysis fourteen  hours  a  day,  that  her  own 
belief  in  immortality  seems  ineradicable,  and  that 
science  is  not  to  be  blamed  if  she  has  not  lost 
through  the  analytical  process  her  instinctive  belief 
in  individual  immortality.  But  she  clearly  shows 
that  scientific  proof  of  it  is  lacking. 

"  I  was  torn  by  pity  for  those  who  were  suffer- 
ing, and  after  years  of  war  nearly  every  one  was 
suffering ;  but  I  wanted  to  be  at  the  front  with  the 
Red  Cross,  and  my  health  would  not  permit  me  to 
go.  I  could  help  various  war  committees,  but  I 
could  not  go  to  my  tortured  and  beloved  France  — 


318         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

to  be  perhaps  an  added  burden,  should  I  break  down 
altogether. 

"  The  only  escape  from  this  conflict  was  in  ab- 
struse studies,  studies  where  pure  mind  can  work. 
So  I  seriously  took  up  Analytical  Psychology,  in 
which  I  had  been  mildly  interested  since  1915. 
Some  14  hours  a  day  for  a  year  I  studied,  some 
of  the  time  with  a  teacher,  some  of  the  time  alone. 
I  burrowed  under  the  theories  of  the  three  great 
schools,  and  synthetized  them,  after  my  fashion. 
I  had  rather  an  active  mind  to  experiment  on  —  my 
own.  The  '  resistance,'  so-called,  had  been  broken 
down  by  the  teacher. 

"  My  present  line  of  life  (and  through  the  anal- 
ysis of  my  dreams  I  have  means  of  knowing  what 
it  is)  points  to  the  resumption  of  my  original  lit- 
erary work,  poetry,  fiction  and  essays,  and  to  the 
exclusion,  so  far  as  possible,  of  everything  that 
would  deflect  me  from  that  course. 

"  My  own  belief  in  immortality  seems  ineradic^ 
able.  I  did  not  know  that  until  it  was  tested  out- 
But  we  must  always  remember  that  our  personal 
belief  is  not  absolute  evidence  of  the  truth  of  what 
we  believe  —  at  least  until  we  shall  have  examined 
all  the  psychological  roots  of  the  belief,  and  in  the 
present  state  of  our  knowledge  that  is  well-nigh  im- 
possible. 

"  I  have  touched  upon  analytical  psychology  in 
this  introduction  because  I  am  so  constituted  that 
I  cannot  publish  this  last  volume  of  my  automatic 
writings  without  indicating  my  point  of  view,  with. 


SCIENTIFIC  INVESTIGATIONS        319 

the  same  frankness  as  in  former  introductions. 
Please  do  not  blame  science  because  I  have  not 
lost  through  the  analytic  process  my  instinctive  be- 
lief in  individual  immortality.  I  assure  you  it  has 
not  been  the  fault  of  science. 

"  So  having  found  a  well  whose  waters  were  re- 
freshing, I  note  the  fact  —  and  pass  on." 

Her  experience  in  automatic  writing  is  strikingly 
similar  to  my  own  ordinary  composition.  The  gen- 
eral idea  of  a  book  or  a  chapter  or  a  paragraph  is 
in  my  mind  as  a  sort  of  indefinite  feeling  which  is 
to  become  definite  in  the  sentence  or  the  paragraph. 
But  I  can  quite  as  truly  say  that  at  the  beginning 
of  a  sentence  I  never  know  how  it  will  end,  because 
by  "know''  in  this  sense  I  should  have  to  mean 
"  be  conscious  of  the  specific  words  "  with  which 
the  sentence  is  to  end.  I  could  not  know  that  in 
this  sense  because  I  should  have  to  be  conscious  of 
a  whole  long  spoken  sentence  seriatim.  When  I 
write  I  hear  the  words  as  auditory  mental  images 
in  my  mind's  ear,  and,  if  they  come  too  fast,  I  can- 
not write  them.  In  no  case  can  I  be  said  to  be 
conscious  of  all  of  them  at  once.  At  any  point  in 
the  sentence  I  do  not  have  in  consciousness  more 
than  four  or  five  words,  so  that  if  the  sentence  con- 
tains twenty  words  the  consciousness  of  the  last 
five  words  puts  the  first  fifteen  out  of  conscious- 
ness. This  does  not  mean  that  I  do  not  have  feel- 
ings of  the  appropriateness  or  inappropriateness  of 
the  last  five  to  the  other  fifteen.  For  the  last  five 
have  been  chosen  from  the  unconscious  by  the  un- 


320         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

conscious  for  the  special  purpose  of  being  fit  and 
suitable  for  the  first  fifteen.  But  while  writing  the 
first  five  I  am  unconscious  of  the  last  five,  although 
I  might  be  said  to  be  more  or  less  aware  of  what 
they  are  going  to  be  like. 

So  that  between  the  most  conscious  possible  form 
of  writing  which  the  ordinary  person  does  when  he 
writes  a  letter,  and  the  absolutely  automatic  writ- 
ing (done  either  awake,  but  not  looking  at  or  read- 
ing the  finger  motions,  or  in  a  trance)  there  is  no 
difference  in  kind  but  only  in  degree.  Even  if  I 
know  what  I  want  to  say,  I  am,  just  as  much  as  is 
an  automatist,  unconscious  of  what  words  I  am 
going  to  say  it  in.  In  this  sense  my  writing  is  as 
automatic  as  is  that  of  the  Letters  from  a  Living 
Dead  Man,  and  I  should  be  quite  as  unwilling  to 
ascribe  anything  I  wrote  to  the  control  of  a  spirit 
as  I  should  any  of  the  so-called  spirit  messages  con- 
veyed through  the  now  very  numerous  automatic 
writers. 

Excepting  the  case  of  the  other  automatic  writer 
mentioned  in  the  preceding  section  this  is  the  only 
case  on  record  where  the  automatism,  which  had 
every  mark  of  being  controlled  by  a  disembodied 
spirit,  has  been  frankly  admitted  to  be  the  work 
of  the  unconscious.  This  case  of  the  writer  of  the 
Letters  from  the  Living  Man  is  the  more  interesting 
from  the  fact  that  she  began  by  being  sceptical, 
was  convinced  by  her  own  feelings  and  by  the  in- 
ternal evidence  of  the  letters  themselves  that  the 
latter  were  veridical;   but   after  psychoanalysis. 


SCIENTIFIC  INVESTIGATIONS        321 

while  she  declares  her  belief  in  immortality  un- 
shaken,  she  resolves  to  do  no  more  automatic  writ- 
ing. If  she  were  not  now  practically  convinced 
that  as  communications  they  have  no  scientific 
value  she  would  certainly  have  gone  on  with  them, 
for  in  coherence  and  in  beauty  of  style,  in  their 
actual  mental  content  and  elevated  spiritual  char- 
acter, they  are  unsurpassed  among  automatic  writ- 
ings. 

Furthermore  she  is  something  of  a  clairvoyant 
too,  saying  that  while  in  New  York  she  "  saw  the 
shelling  of  Scarborough  at  the  hour  when  it  oc- 
curred." It  is  significant  that  she  only  incident- 
ally notes  this  fact  in  her  introduction. 

But  she  says  she  is  a  writer  of  fiction,  poetry  and 
essays  and  desires  to  devote  her  time  to  these  in  the 
future,  showing  by  this  attitude  the  real  value  she 
places  on  the  Letters  as  scientific  proofs  entirely 
apart  from  any  value  they  may  have  as  works  of 
the  imagination. 

It  would  be  most  desirable  if  all  the  other  auto- 
matists  and  psychical  researchers  would  spend 
fourteen  hours  a  day  on  psychoanalytic  studies  for 
a  year ! 

§  6.  The  Value  of  Phantasy 

Finally  we  must  conclude  that  the  attempt  to  in- 
ject the  pleasure-pain,  phantasying  activities  of  the 
unconscious  mind  into  science  is  a  wholly  unscien- 
tific procedure.  The  only  way  the  phantasying  ac- 
tivity can  enter  scientific  work  is  the  way  it  has 


322         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

in  psychoanalysis,  namely  by  being  studied  as  a 
mental  phenomenon  quite  on  an  equality  with  all 
other  mental  phenomena.  It  becomes  the  mate- 
rial of  scientific  work  but  it  cannot  perform  sci- 
entific work.  That  is,  however,  exactly  what  spir- 
itists are  trying  to  do  with  it.  The  phantasies  of 
the  human  unconscious  can  no  more  be  made  into 
the  laws  of  cause  and  effect,  than  can  the  amoeba 
studied  by  a  biologist  be  turned  into  a  biologist. 
The  content  of  the  visual  and  auditory  imagination, 
consisting  of  mental  pictures  and  words  and  other 
sounds  can  no  more  logically  be  regarded  as  ab- 
stract principles  than  can  a  picture  or  a  sonata  be 
proved  always  to  arouse  the  same  emotions  in  all 
who  see  or  hear.  But  that  is  what  the  spiritist  is 
attempting  to  do. 

The  collective  phantasy  of  races  and  nations  has 
produced  racial  religions  and  national  creeds,  and 
the  influence  of  these  has  been  great  and  beneficial 
at  times.  But  there  has  always  been  the  same  an- 
tagonism between  religion  and  science  that  there  is 
between  the  phantasy  in  the  individual  and  reality 
thinking.  The  antagonism  need  never  lead  to  rup- 
ture. It  may  be  as  advantageous  and  really  as  nec- 
essary as  that  between  antagonistic  muscles  in  the 
human  frame  and  as  inevitable  as  emotional  ambi- 
valence. It  is  only  the  attempt  of  misguided 
thinkers  to  reconcile  them,  or  of  either  one  of  the 
antagonists  to  do  without  the  other,  that  leads  to 
disaster. 

Therefore  it  seems  to  an  impartial  observer  a  pity 


SCIENTIFIC  INVESTIG«ATIONS       323 

n 
that  belief  should  try  to  force  knowledge,  or  that 

knowledge  should  be  thought  by  any  one  to  under- 
mine belief.  It  seems  like  the  annihilation  of  be- 
lief to  have  belief  invoke  the  support  of  knowledge. 
Whether  belief  or  knowledge  be  on  the  higher 
plane,  they  are  on  two  different  planes  and  they 
never  can  coincide.  The  very  fact  that  the  spiritist 
calls  for  the  help  of  science  to  fortify  his  belief  is 
a  proof  that  his  belief  is  weakening,  and  that  he 
feels  it  needs  support.  The  true  believer  is  the  one 
whose  mental  processes  go  on  entirely  on  the  plane 
of  phantasy.  He  is  independent  of  knowledge,  and 
should  remain  so.  It  looks  much  as  if  he  could 
never  get  the  knowledge  which  would  satisfy  him, 
particularly  if  he  begins  the  search  for  it  late  in 
life.  On  the  other  hand,  the  man  of  science  will 
never  bother  with  belief,  so  long  as  he  remains  truly 
scientific.  It  means  nothing  to  him  and  is  abso- 
lutely foreign  to  the  plane  of  his  reality  thinking. 
Except,  of  course,  that  a  man  may  be  truly  sci- 
entific in  all  his  thinking  along  his  special  line  of 
research  and  be  quite  the  reverse  in  any  other  line. 
Such  a  man,  however,  ought  not  to  try  to  make  two 
parallels  meet,  but  to  realize  that  in  this  respect  he  {/''^ 
is  himself  a  double  personality. 

I  have  mentioned  the  different  values  which  the 
two  kinds  of  thinking  have,  and  I  shall  not  be  so 
rash  as  to  say  that  one  of  them  is  greater  than  the 
other,  a  statement  which  seems  to  be  as  futile  as 
that  either  man  or  woman  is  more  necessary  than 
the  other  for  the  perpetuation  of  the  race.     The 


32t         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIEIT 

grand  fallacy  is  the  failure  to  recognize  that  neither 
the  reality  principle  nor  the  pleasure-pain  principle 
can  be  entirely  dispensed  with  in  human  life. 
There  is  an  undesirable  preponderance  of  the  lat- 
ter even  in  the  highest  civilizations  and  the  spir- 
itists are  trying  to  add  to  it,  and  to  enhance  its 
value  by  maintaining  that  it  is  the  true  reality 
thinking.  If  true  scientists  did  the  corresponding 
thing  they  too  would  be  maintaining  that  in  reality 
thinking  was  your  only  true  phantasy,  but  I  have 
yet  to  see  them  doing  that. 

No  one  with  clear  vision  doubts  the  value  of 
phantasy  if  it  does  not  try  to  disguise  itself  as 
absolute  and  literal  truth.  Its  value  in  art  of  all 
types  is  unquestioned.  It  produces  poems,  pic- 
tures, symphonies  and  altruistic  conduct  and  is  one 
of  the  legitimate  expressions  of  emotion  and  the 
necessary  employments  of  man's  excess  energies. 
Only  let  it  not  attempt  to  control  the  reality  prin- 
ciple of  conscious  thought  or  to  offer  itself  as  proof 
of  things  that  really  do  not  exist.  The  wish  is  for 
what  is  not.  The  wish  is  the  ideal  representation 
of  the  non-existent.  When  this  non-existent  comes 
into  being  the  wish  is  automatically  transferred  to 
some  other  non-existent  ideal.  We  might  almost 
say  to  the  psychical  researchers :  "  Do  not  try  so 
hard  to  prove  what  we  believe.  If  you  do,  and 
we  consequently  know  it,  we  shall  have  to  find 
something  else  to  believe,  that  we  do  not  know." 


CHAPTER  XI 

PRESENT  STATUS 

§  1.  The  Medium's  Material  Reward 

About  the  present  status  of  psychical  research 
there  is  really  little  to  be  said.  It  is  on  the  wrong 
track,  looking  for  what  does  not  exist,  or  could  not 
be  proved  to  exist,  if  it  did.  Mediums  will  be  forth- 
coming in  the  future  as  they  have  in  the  past,  and 
will  refuse  to  be  analysed  because  unconsciously 
they  are  aware  of  the  unconscious  deception  that 
they  innocently  practise.  If  a  medium,  who  is 
"  taken  up  "  by  a  coterie  of  rich  men  and  knows 
that  it  will  mean  to  him  a  fortune  of  several  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars,  should  allow  himself  to  be 
analysed  and  let  it  be  scientifically  proved,  as  Miss 
X  did,  that  all  his  messages  were  messages  from 
his  own  unconscious  storehouse  of  memory  images, 
he  would  be  a  fool  as  the  world  goes.  Yet  he  would 
really  be  doing  more  for  science  than  are  all  the 
automatic  writers  and  crystal  gazers  who  are  look- 
ing for  proofs  that  their  words  and  visions  could 
not  be  the  result  of  previous  impressions  on  their 
nerve  and  brain  substance. 

The  material  gains  of  mediumship  are  very  great. 
Not  only  are  the  subjective  and  the  objective  ego 
augmented  in  general  but  in  particular  the  social 
position  of  the  medium  himself  is  greatly  advanced. 

325 


326        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

Take  for  example  the  famous  medium  Daniel  Hume, 
or  Home,  whose  history  is  so  well  told  in  The  New 
Spiritualism.  His  gifts  gave  him  entrance  into  the 
best  European  society  and  finally  settled  him  per- 
manently in  a  comfortable  English  estate,  after 
which  he  ceased  his  performances.  Similarly  with 
all  the  mediums  who  have  been  taken  up  by  culti- 
vated circles  in  this  country  and  in  England. 
There  will  always  be  a  great  demand  for  these 
sensitives  as  long  as  there  are  people  who  will  be- 
lieve in  spiritism.  It  is  not  the  mediums  who  make 
the  spiritists.     The  spiritists  evoke  the  medium. 

§  2.  Physical  Manifestations 

And  as  for  the  physical  manifestations  we  shall 
have  to  say  that  we  have  not  proved  them  yet,  sci- 
entifically. They  fall  into  two  groups,  the  levita- 
tions,  re-percussions,  apports  and  materializations 
supposed  to  be  mediated  via  special  persons,  and 
the  manifestations  said  by  some  to  have  been  re- 
ceived through  physical  apparatus,  entirely  inde- 
pendent of  human  control,  such  as  those  of  Matla 
and  Zaalberg  van  Zelst  of  Holland.  The  latter 
have  not  yet  found  scientific  approval.  Announce- 
ment has  been  made  that  Thomas  A.  Edison  is 
working  on  apparatus  for  the  same  purpose.  The 
former  are,  as  has  already  been  hinted  before  in 
this  book,  without  the  complication  of  that  type  of 
false  perception  consisting  of  the  association  of  the 
reality  feeling  with  the  mental  images  of  the  vari- 
ous senses,  chiefly  sight,  hearing  and  touch,  an 


PRESENT  STATUS  327 

association  greatly  facilitated  by  the  darkness  and 
quiet  of  the  seance.  They  are  the  only  ones  that 
jvould  have  any  scientific  value,  but  they  have  as 
yet  produced  nothing. 

§3.  What  is  ''Spirit''? 

As  far  as  science  today  knows,  spirit  is  nothing. 
There  is  no  such  thing  to  be  revealed  as  a  force 
operating  from  without  upon  real  things  with  any- 
thing more  like  human  intelligence  than  the  swell- 
ing of  water  before  it  becomes  ice.  We  might  well 
say  why  should  there  be?  By  the  "  use ''  of  spirits 
what  end  would  be  gained  in  a  universe  so  admir- 
ably, as  far  as  we  can  see  it,  operating  according 
to  absolutely  universal  and  rigid  laws?  Would 
spirits  be  able  any  the  better  to  regulate  the  human 
body  than  the  laws  which  do  regulate  it  now? 

But  we  know  quite  well,  not  why  should  there  be 
spirits,  but  why  people  imagine  there  are  spirits 
and  in  just  what  originates  the  development  of  the 
belief  in  spirits  and  in  immortality,  and  knowing 
what  we  do,  we  might  well  resent  the  interpolation 
of  spirit  into  a  perfectly  well  ordered  cosmos. 
The  only  object  of  "  spirit "  is  to  break  those  laws 
governing  Nature,  for  the  benefit  of  the  individual 
when  the  laws  hurt  him.  It  is  quite  like  poetic 
justice  that  the  main  object  of  the  psychical  re- 
searcher is  to  try  to  show  the  breaks  in  the  even 
working  of  the  laws  of  the  universe  carefully  dem- 
onstrated by  science  as  it  continues  calmly  and 
steadily  its  even  course  laid  out  for  it  according 


328         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

to  the  reality  principle.  But  psychical  research 
has  never  found  anything  like  a  break  in  those  uni- 
versal reasons  which  I  trust  I  have  made  plain. 
Science  is  not  looking  for  such  breaks,  and  is  not 
likely  to  find  them. 

§  4.  Quality  of  Content 

A  word  should  be  added  about  the  quality  of  the 
content  of  the  spiritistic  messages.  Not  only  are 
.they  trivial  and  without  the  remotest  resemblance 
to  the  grandeur  of  thought  of  the  bibles  of  the 
world  which  contain  the  phantasy  of  the  races 
backed  by  the  claim  of  authoritative  inspiration ; 
not  only  have  they  in  every  instance  failed  to  give 
what  would  be  the  most  desired  by  humans,  and 
have  besides  criticized  the  questioners  for  wanting 
it ;  not  only  do  they  represent  in  general  the  worst 
utterances  of  the  medium's  unconscious  mind, 
where  the  "  inspired  "  writings  of  all  nations  and 
races  have  given  the  best  expression  to  the  ever- 
lasting urge;  but  it  is  possible  in  these  spiritistic 
communications  to  detect  the  mercenary,  the  quib- 
bling, the  fencing,  the  indirection  of  a  wild  attempt 
to  guess  out  what  will  please  the  hearer,  without 
any  attempt  whatever  to  gain  true  breadth  of  vision 
and  nobility  of  thought. 

In  this  the  contrast  is  such  that  in  the  purely 
phantastic  literature  as  distinguished  from  the 
actual  scientific  report  of  facts,  we  find  a  wealth  of 
imagination  and  pathos  and  humour  that  would 
have  to  be  equalled  if  not  surpassed  by  the  utter- 


PKESENT  STATUS  329 

anees  of  the  mediums,  if  we  were  to  regard  them  as 
having  any  true  emotional  value.  The  frank  ex- 
pressions of  phantasy  seen  in  all  forms  of  art  have 
a  virtue  and  a  strength  of  their  own  and  perform 
an  undeniable  social  service,  whether  or  not  they 
bear  the  imprimatur  of  an  authoritative  inspira- 
tion, but  from  the  entire  body  of  results  of  spirit- 
istic utterance  such  value  is  completely  lacking. 
And  the  attempts  to  gain  the  imprimatur  of 
science  for  the  unconscious  utterances  of  second- 
rate  minds  have  resulted  only  in  the  impartial  and 
broad-minded  observer  being  repelled  by  the 
material  produced  and,  for  any  enjoyment  of  the 
phantastic,  which  in  all  people  is  legitimate 
enough,  driven  to  the  old  artistic  paths  of  litera- 
ture, painting,  sculpture,  music  and  poetry.  Yet, 
for  the  deliverances  of  the  spiritistic  medium  to 
have  the  same  or  greater  value  for  modern  social 
advancement,  they  would  have  to  present  some- 
thing that  would  rank  with  or  above  the  works  of 
Homer,  Vergil,  Dante,  Shakespeare,  Michel  Angelo, 
Phidias,  Beethoven.  How  can  humanity  "  on  this 
fair  mountain  leave  to  feed  and  batten  on  this 
moor, "  unless  they  are,  as  I  have  elsewhere  inti- 
mated, impelled  thereto  by  fear? 

Besides  the  trivial,  ignoble  and  otherwise  repel- 
lent content  of  the  volume  after  volume  of  collected 
utterances  of  mediums,  the  spiritists  themselves 
warn  against  bad  or  dangerous  messages.  But  we 
should  be  no  more  surprised  or  terrified  by  the  evil 
that  comes  out  of  the  unconscious  via  the  medium 


330         MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

than  that  which  comes  into  the  consciousness  of 
the  world  in  daily  acts  of  violence  and  hate,  if 
only  they  both  be  recognized  as  coming  from  ex- 
actly the  same  source.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
were  forced  to  believe  that  the  "  bad  '^  messages 
were  caused  by  "  evil  spirits,"  we  should  certainly 
be  unhappily  situated ;  we  should  be  in  a  fair  way 
to  become  terrorized  by  the  thought  of  what  would 
happen  if  the  evil  ones  gained  the  upper  hand  in 
ourselves  or  in  the  world  at  large. 

The  "  evil  "  messages  are  however  only  an  object 
of  pity  and  ridicule  when  they  are  recognized  as 
merely  the  dejecta  of  an  individual's  unconscious 
mind,  and  no  more  important  for  human  welfare, 
or  able  to  do  it  harm  than  the  ashes  dropping  from 
a  grate.  If,  then,  the  ouija  board  and  the  crystal 
and  the  other  paraphernalia  tap  the  lower  levels  of 
a  single  person's  unconscious,  the  dregs  therefrom 
issuing  are  to  be  regarded  only  as  curiosities  and 
of  no  vital  import  unless  they  accumulate  like  rub- 
bish and  cause  disease.  Only  if  we  attribute  to 
these  "  messages,"  be  they  comforting  or  distress- 
ing, an  origin  in  a  mysterious  "  spirit "  world  will 
they  appear  to  us  as  having  any  importance  or 
power  over  our  lives.  But  the  attributing  of  any 
sort  of  power  to  the  stratum  of  mind  producing 
these  results  would  be  most  illogical  in  itself,  even 
if  there  were  not  other  much  more  valid  reasons, 
mentioned  elsewhere  in  this  volume,  for  turning 
from  these  products  of  the  mind's  lower  levels  to 
others  much  more  valuable  and  constructive. 


PRESENT  STATUS  331 

§  5.  Infantility  in  Civilised  Spirit  World 

From  the  fact  that  the  primitive  mind  projects 
its  unconscious  wishes  into  the  external  world  and 
says,  though  it  makes  no  attempt  to  prove,  that 
there  are  spirits  there  that  work  in  accord  with  his 
own  wishes;  we  should  be  inclined  to  suppose  that 
the  variety  of  spirits  that  he  imagines  inhabiting 
river,  tree  and  mountain,  and  that  he  imagines  liv- 
ing after  death  in  some  Valhalla,  or  Paradise  or 
happy  hunting  ground,  would  be  an  infantile  va- 
riety of  spirits  manifesting  infantile  characteristics, 
because  the  act  of  projection  itself  is  an  infantile 
act,  in  comparison  with  the  more  adult  attitude 
implied  in  the  reality  principle.  The  pleasure- \ 
pain  principle  on  which  the  mechanism  of  projec- 
tion works  is  infantile  and  itself  characteristic  of 
an  infantile  state  of  mind,  while  only  the  truly 
adult  can  be  governed  solely  by  the  reality  princi- 
ple in  all  his  thinking. 

But  the  world  in  which,  in  the  view  of  the  primi- 
tive mind,  his  spirits  live,  is  a  truly  adult  world, 
adult,  that  is,  as  far  as  his  experience  goes.  The 
pleasures  which  he  imagines  will  be  his,  after  he 
has  departed  this  life,  are  all  those  of  adults  in 
primitive  society,  mating  and  fighting  and  hunt- 
ing and  feasting. 

On  the  other  hand  the  pleasures  imagined  by  a 
large  part  of  present  day  civilized  humanity  are 
those  which  were  the  pleasures  of  childhood  before 
the  individual  became  adult.     They  consist  mostly 


J 


332        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

of  the  exaltation  of  the  father,  and  represent  the 
relation  between  father  and  children  as  of  the 
time  before  there  was  any  conflict  between  the 
younger  and  the  older  generation.  Heaven  of  the 
modern  civilized  world  is  where  there  is  absolute 
respect  for  the  father,  a  state  of  mind  which  rep- 
resents the  early  condition  of  the  child. 

This  difference  is  due  to  the  very  early  maturing 
of  primitive  man  and  the  very  late  maturing  of 
civilized  man.  The  prolongation  of  the  infancy 
period  in  civilized  society  has  long  been  a  matter 
of  comment.  A  modem  philosopher  has  noted 
that  an  ancient  Greek  philosopher  also  called  at- 
tention to  it.  The  prolongation  of  infancy  is  re- 
garded, and  rightly,  as  the  basis  on  which  civiliza- 
tion rests,  as  it  gives  a  longer  period  during  which 
the  experience  gathered  by  ancestors  can  be  com- 
municated to  their  descendants,  and  only  by  means 
of  this  education  can  there  be  so  complicated  and 
closely  interwoven  a  fabric  of  society  as  we  have 
today. 

If  the  primitive  instincts  of  animals  and  men  are 
allowed  full  expression,  the  result  is  a  continual 
warfare  until  the  weaker  is  beaten.  One  of  these 
is  the  instinct  of  the  male  to  remove  all  other  males 
in  sight  and  appropriate  all  the  females  in  the 
flock.  This  is  an  instinct  making  for  survival  of 
the  fittest,  because  it  guarantees  the  females  all 
being  impregnated  by  the  strongest  male,  result- 
ing in  the  improvement  of  the  qualities  of  the 
stock. 


PKESENT  STATUS  333 

The  primitive  mental  mechanism  of  projection 
working  in  minds  of  primitive  people  produces  the 
adult  theology  and  eschatology  of  the  Happy 
Hunting  Ground  and  the  Valhalla.  The  same 
mechanism  in  the  minds  of  people  of  highly  civil- 
ized races  produces  an  absolutely  infantile  the- 
ology. That  is  because  the  inborn  instincts  of  men 
have  been  repressed.  They  have  had  to  be  re- 
pressed because  in  order  to  have  neighbours  to  live 
with  and  to  make  possible  various  kinds  of  co-oper- 
ative activities  producing  and  handling  all  sorts  of 
commodities  —  in  order  to  have  neighbours,  you 
have  to  let  them  live  in  the  neighbourhood.  This  is 
how  the  mechanism  of  projection  has  worked  in 
primitive  and  in  complicated  society.  The  result 
has  been  the  increase  of  urban  population,  the  de- 
pendence of  people  on  each  other,  the  evolution  of 
huge  social  organisms  and  of  the  "  red  ''  element. 
Alongside  of  the  greater  phenomena  like  these,  '> 
spiritualism,  as  an  attempt  to  give  scientific  proof  \ 
to  a  thing  quite  phantastic  is  of  course  of  very  / 
slight  relative  importance.  Of  far  greater  impor- 
tance is  it,  I  think,  to  give  publicity  as  far  as  pos- 
sible to  the  actual  causes  why  there  has  been  so 
spontaneous  and  so  persistent  a  belief  in  spirits 
on  the  one  hand ;  and,  on  the  other,  why  the  neces- 
sity was  felt  to  prove  scientifically  their  existence 
as  intelligences  and  forces  operating  independently 
of  matter.  The  wish  for  a  proof  is  the  direct  result 
of  the  jear  of  death, —  a  conscious  emotion  which 
has  been  repressed  into  the  unconscious. 


\ 


334        MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SPIRIT 

§  6.  Reality  Thinking 

The  principle  of  reality  thinking  is  the  one  on 
which  all  the  triumphs  of  modern  science  rest,  and 
it  is  to  the  credit  of  Mr.  Thos.  A.  Edison,  if  cor- 
rectly reported  in  the  American  Magazine  ^  that 
he  conceives  his  experiments  in  truly  scientific 
spirit  of  expecting  nothing  definitely,  but  is  never- 
theless willing  to  accept  nothing  except  as  it  is 
subject  to  experimental  control,  to  accept  nothing 
in  other  words,  that  has  been  produced  so  far. 

The  reality  principle  has  been  that  on  which 
Mr.  Edison  has  given  us  his  many  contributions  to 
the  convenience  and  pleasure  of  present  day  liv- 
ing, and  on  which  all  our  present  day  material 
progress  has  been  made.     The  fact  that  present 
/day  civilization  is  as  unsatisfactory  as  it  is,  that 
/  it  shows,  indeed,  immediate  threats  of  completely 
I    collapsing    is,    however,    due    to    the    enormous 
y  potency  in  the  minds  of  all  men,  of  the  pleasure- 
"^pain  principle,  that  on  which  as  Freud  puts  it, 
wishes   are   fulfilled    on   the   hallucinatory   path. 
This  does  not  mean  that  conscious  wishes  are  thus 
projected   upon  external   reality  as  place  names 
were  hung  on  the  back  of  the  Elizabethan  stage. 
Consciously  we  realize  the  vanity  of  human  wishes. 
It  is  the  unconscious  wishes  that  the  reality  prin- 
ciple, working  in  the  minds  of  psychoanalysts,  has 
shown  to  be  the  element  in  modern  society  that, 
unless  recognized  and  resymbolized,  and  not  re- 

lOct.,  1920. 


PRESENT  STATUS  335 

pressed,  will  cause  even  the  greatest  works  of  man 
both  physical  and  mental  to  come  to  naught. 

It  is  therefore  the  most  urgent  need  of  the 
present  day  that  those  qualified  for  research  in  the 
unconscious  shall  be  given  the  greatest  possible 
help  and  encouragement.  Only  by  seeing  and 
using  the  enormous  power  of  the  unconscious  wish 
can  we  really  attain  any  civilization  worthy  of 
the  name,  or  a  civilization  that  will  endure  more 
than  a  few  brief  centuries.  The  unconscious  holds 
the  key  not  only  to  the  explanation  of  the  "phe- 
nomena "  of  spiritism  but  of  the  explanation  of 
all  the  phenomena  of  present  day  existence,  and  is 
the  only  key  which  will  unlock  the  door  to  a  digni- 
fied and  worthy  social  life  in  the  future. 


THE  END 


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INDEX 


Accidents,  121 
Ambivalence,  265 
Animism,  168 
Barker,  Elsa,  315 
Belief,  247 

and  Wish,  259,  307 
Compulsion,   271 
Conflict,  63 

Conscious  Psychology,  114 
Consciousness,    Complexity    of, 
44,  99 

Narrowing  of,  291 

Stream  of,  1 
Death,  Fear  of,  248 
Deja  Vue,  26 
Emotions,   56,  204 
Fear,  65,  216,  248 
Feeling   of    Reality,   20,  178, 
294 
detachable,  47 

Sameness,  25 
Feelings  are  Sensations,  31 

and  Emotions,  42 
Fission  and  Fusion,  136 
Hallucinations,  39 
Infantility,  331 
Introjection,  161 
Magnification,  130 
Meaning,  22 
Mechanisms,  147 

of  Reading,  182 
Medium,   86,  325 
Memory,  266 

Unconscious,  157 
Miracles,  190 
Neurotic,  268 
Occurrence,  107 


Panorama,  36 
Personality,   153 
Phantasy,  321 

Pleasure-pain  Principle,  240 
Postural  Tonus,  202 
Projection.  165.  173     . 
rsycnical  Research,  286 
Psychoanalysis,  73 
Reading  Mechanisms,  182 
Reality,   Degrees   of,  23 

Feeling  of,  20,  34,  171 
and  Images,  41 

Thinking,   176,   178,  334 
Reassociation,   106 
Repression,  78,  207,  209 
Resistance  to  Knowledge,  93 
Sadistic  Wish,  260 
Sameness,  Feeling  of,  25 
"Spirit,"  275 
Spiritism  and  War,  263 
Stoics,  213 
Taboo,  271 
Telepathy,  237 
Totem,  273 
Transference,  195 
Unconscious  an  Hypothesis,  117 

as  an  Urge,  93 

Emotions,  201 

Ideas  and  Feelings,  101 

Memory,  157 

Omnipercipient,   139 

Perceptions,   181 

Trends,  87 

Will,  201,  232 

Wishes,  143 
War,  263 
Will,  219 


337 


Tir 


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